A most distressing preoccupation.

I’ve been actively applying wrinkle cream since the age of probably thirteen. Most people I tell this to respond in astonishment; they are incredulous, and their first words are usually “But you don’t have any wrinkles!” Exactly, genius. I don’t have wrinkles, I wear wrinkle cream. You have wrinkles, you laugh at me for wearing wrinkle cream. You do the math. As far as I’m concerned, it’s their loss they don’t understand the power of retinol and green tea to ward off premature crows’ feet, and they’ll come crying to me in twenty years when the irreversible damage needs any help it can get from my non-professional dermatological opinion. It often comes as an affront to people when I tell them to stop raising their eyebrows in wonder (sometimes I even reach across the table and physically push the furrow out of their brows), as it will lead inevitably to forehead creases, and nobody wants to look forever inquisitive-or maybe that’s just me.

My mad dash to protect myself from the inevitable, although currently (and thankfully) non-visible age process, is not all that my fear of age entails. Besides the physical manifestation of age, I am afraid of the philosophical implications of aging too, and I fear the passage of time (as it always seems to move too quickly). As my 21^st approaches in approximately a week, the last birthday with any legitimately exciting connotations in America (besides 25, I suppose, when you can rent a car, finally, after a whopping nine years of driving experience) will be over, along with my “youth.” With drinking abilities, there is not much America can deny me anymore. This, to me, is a sign of growing up—leaving behind the days when people, and the law, can tell you “no,” because you’re not old enough. So what happens now that I’m “old” enough? Where do I go from here, what is there to look forward to, what age am I anticipating now? What excitement comes next? As far as I can see, none, in terms of age.

I celebrated 15 getting confirmed on a Palm Sunday with Allison Pomerantz, 16 in Mexico with Mom, 17 and 18 home alone (the latter involved a broken ankle and twin peritonsilar abscesses), 19 at Disney World, and 20 on Hilton Head Island. At each of these landmarks, I could be heard saying things such as “I can drive!”, “This is my last year as a child!”, “This is my first year as an adult!”, “This is my last year as a teenager!”, “This is the first year of my third decade of life!”—preoccupation at its most obsessive and analytical. Why didn’t someone tell me to just take a chill pill, to loosen up on the associations of age and rather just enjoy the age itself? Side note: on at least three of these birthdays, I can recollect having received some sort of wrinkle prevention cream (legitimately, thanks Mom for endorsing my obsession). Kirsten’s 29^th birthday is forthcoming on April 14^th. Although my siblings and parents are probably as yet unaware of this (I, of course, have had it long considered), this is the last birthday in our family that will find the four of us “kids” as twenty-somethings, the last time in all of our lives that we’ll all be in a place of physical vitality and an avant-garde cultural mentality that so defines this decade of our lives. Is it so wrong of me to want to rewind to 1999, the last year we all lived together on Scio Church Road, when we were kids?

So yes, blah blah blah, I know it is fantastically exciting to have the privilege of spending my 21^st in Australia, amidst a culture of partygoers and perpetual cheer. But what if I don’t want to celebrate my 21^st at all? Yes, it will be fun to finally be a “big kid” when I return home in June, but after that? After the excitement wears down, will there be an age worth looking forward to, or is it merely dreadful from here on out? It seems like defeat, reaching the ever-anticipated American age, and realizing that it was a trick: there’s nothing anticipation-worthy from here on out, so at least now you can have a drink to drown your aging sorrows. Oscar Wilde once wrote: “We never get back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!” I wholly agree with his Peter Pan mentality-I don’t want my twenty-something pulse of joy to ever disappear. I know that I can retain this mentality philosophically speaking, but is it so wrong to want time to just stop in its tracks, to give me a few more years to enjoy this time of life, perhaps to rewind just a little bit and live some of it over again, before an onslaught of responsibility appears as I walk across the stage in May 2011 (hopefully)?

You guys probably all think I’m crazy. You’re saying, “Megan, loosen UP. 21 is not that much different than 20. There are 9 more years until you need to even begin worrying about “old age” and saying goodbye to the popularly considered age of youth” (sorry, Kir...). That’s not much of a consolation, though, and I’m afraid I’ll always be a bit more distressed about the passage of time and the presence of wrinkles than any other lucky twentysomething who is free from these worries. Call it a quirk, chalk it up to individuality, but this preoccupation probably isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, as it’s been weighing on my mind since that 15^th birthday on Palm Sunday so long ago.

Everyone keeps telling me to have the time of my life, that my time here will fly by, that I only get a semester abroad once. They’re right, they’re entirely right. If they were here instead, that’d probably be much more easily accepted than it is for me. I’m trying; I do live every day trying to make this the best possible experience for myself. I guess all I can do on the eve of my 21^st here in Australia is to slap on some extra eye cream and go out and make this one count. Oscar Wilde was also correct when he wrote: “Don’t be afraid. There are exquisite things in store for you. This is merely the beginning.”