Turn and face the strange.

I think one of the strangest things for me to face as I've gotten older... is how severe change can be.

When I was younger, and I used to envision myself a little bit older, I would always imagine the changes that would take place. At 10, imagining 16--at 16, imagining 20. And I've always been not just wrong on the surface, but deeply wrong on a fundamental level. For example, I might have seen the 16-year-old me dating somebody, experiencing romance for the first time, and starting to figure out what I want to do. Really, the 16-year-old me had experienced romance but not quite in the Suzie High School way I had expected, and the fallout from it had left me beginning to question my values, my beliefs, myself.

At 16 imagining 20, I saw myself filling with knowledge, coming home more complete, content to see myself here on the breaks because I had something to show for myself. Now, I can see that gaining more knowledge has had the impact of not just fulfilling me, but altering how I see the world, especially my old world, in an extraordinary way. I have a very difficult time relating to my parents. They scoff at my entertaining radical ideas about the environment and politics the same way I'm further and further distanced by their consumption and stagnancy. I end up feeling depressed and tongue-tied, and they feel lectured-at.

And yet I'm at conflict with myself, because they're the ones paying for this education that so baffles them. I would hate to leave my school, to settle for something less challenging. But what about my perspective? Is it right to use their money, when I don't know what I'm going to do with myself, when I want to be able to proudly and respectably defend my ideals? I know the debts will all be landing in my lap in a couple of years, but my consumption of their money, and then inwardly and sometimes outwardly critiquing their spending habits and lifestyles--it's not really fair, is it?

And here I thought I'd be worrying about literary analysis and finishing a paper at this age. I've changed monumentally.

I have more to say, but I'll save it for later.