Last night I watched the series finale of American Idol and enjoyed every minute of it. It was fun to see all the contestants from previous seasons. Back then I was as young as them.
But I really wasn’t.
When the show started I was 37. Hardly a kid and yet I still felt as if I was in the 15-28 age range just like the competitors. Well not so much the teenagers. When the show began in 2002, I could have been mom to the younger vocalists. So how can I feel more like their peer than their parent?
I had a theory at one tine that because I never had children I never crossed over to bona fide adulthood. But after asking several friends who are moms, they confirmed that they too still feel young and the same as they always have.
I’ve also heard the idea that you don’t truly become a grown-up until your parents have passed away. Although my mom’s death left me with a huge hole in my life, my heart and my spirit, I don’t know that losing her has made me feel that I stepped out of my youth the moment she took her last breath.
Obviously, living life with all its continual ups and downs can teach you so much and it can certainly age you. But if anything, I still feel like the same girl I have always been with a few scars, some you can see and some you can’t, and dare I say, a little bit of wisdom. But I sure don’t have it all figured out. And there’s nothing that can make you feel more like your twenty-something self than that.
