This is me when I was in preschool.

When people find out that I just turned 18-years-old, the look of shock on their face is hilarious. It never really gets old, people "discovering" that I'm a year younger than I "should be," just very annoying at times. Considering that most people in their freshman year of college turn 19 during that year, being a year younger and not being noticeably younger is very (surprisingly) difficult for people to understand.

Let’s take this back several years ago, all the way back to preschool. I ended up starting kindergarten a year early. My last year of preschool and kindergarten were meshed together. So when I was four, I would go to preschool in the morning and during mandatory nap time I would go to my local elementary school. There I would go do the kindergarten activities and just act as all my peers did. I was, in my eyes and everyone else, a normal kindergartner. But I was not, because I was a year younger.

Over the years in elementary school, it took a while for everyone in my grade to understand that I was different. Well, not that long. Just until the start of first grade. The kids in my class did not know that I was a year younger. I was just different. And what do kids do when someone is different? They isolate them. It was not until we started having class birthday parties and what not that people started comparing ages, and they found out my little secret. I was younger than they were. Once they understood that, they stopped isolating me, but they still treated me as not one of their own. As we grew up and it became less weird that I was younger, my closer friends would answer the questions for me because they had heard the answers so many times.

I never felt like I was younger until someone brought it up. Then it was weird for me to be partaking in conversation with them, or just being in class with them. I remember one time in fourth grade when I was sitting in a group of four, since that’s how the desks were arranged, after having a change in assigned seating. Fourth grade was awesome for me. I had started taking private lessons in violin, started practicing Taekwondo, and I was also a part of the Gifted and Talented Education Program (or GATE for short). Because of that, the fourth graders who were a part of the program with me were merged into a class of fifth graders, who were also a part of the program. So at this table with three of my peers, we figured out who was the oldest (the girl sitting across from me) and of course, I was the youngest. As soon as we figured that out, this small little clique of fourth and fifth graders had a hierarchy, and I was at the bottom.

This happened quite often after I left elementary school and transferred into a private parochial junior high school for sixth grade. People would find out that I was a year younger, put me at the bottom of the totem pole, rarely listen to what I had to say, and then also treat me like a baby or a significantly younger child. I partially blame this on the fact that I was the new girl. You know those movies where there’s a new transfer and everyone thinks she’s really weird and they don’t like her for a while and then the coolest guy falls in love with her and then they start dating and she’s totally cool? (Yes I’m talking about "High School Musical.")

That didn’t happen. One, because it was middle school. But two, because the new girl got weirder, not cooler. I didn’t have many friends in the beginning, and the one girl I had been friends with no one really liked. So naturally I drifted away from her to the “nerds” because I could relate to them more. Then I became friends with the eighth graders, and the eighth graders had their own section. They would always invite me to sit with them, which ended up doing more harm than good. Although I did have friends, those friends were fleeting since they would graduate soon, and I was isolated from my peers. In addition, they treated me like their adorable little sister. I enjoyed the attention, but it was probably not the healthiest for me. This ended up continuing until I was finally in eighth grade and graduating from that school, and on the track to going to high school with none of the kids from my eighth grade class.

Then high school happened, and it was glorious. I became friends with a large group of people who were weird and different in one way or another and I felt truly accepted. I was new, and so was the majority of my class. I was different and new and for once it was totally okay. And then, people found out just how different I am. Things went downhill from there. I was being treated like a child again. In fact, one of the seniors in my friend group literally called me child. Of course, she did that with all the freshmen in our group, but me more often than not because I was the “child” in the circle, even though we were all mostly children.

By the time I was finally a senior, everyone in my class knew that I was a year younger. But I never felt that way personally. It was just the way people treated me that constantly reminded me of being younger. But I felt the same age as everyone else did. I grew up around people older than me, so I mentally aged along with them.

For a while, I hated being younger. I hated it so much, and I resented almost everything that caused me to have started school a year early, especially my parents. I got annoyed every single time someone found out and then pestered me with questions about it. “Did you skip a grade? How are you a year younger?” No. I started a year early. Thank you parents. I would roll my eyes as they stared at me with shock and asked more and more questions about it, rattling off the answers that I had been saying since I was five. I would go to bed at night thinking of how my life would have been so very different if I had not started a year early.

Soon enough I graduated from high school, and off to college I went. No one really cared about age for a good long solid while. Until I couldn’t go to the 18+ nights at the Latin Dance Clubs. I didn’t really care, even though I really wanted to go. I just became very comfortable with the fact that I was younger, and I took pride in that.

Now that I am legally an adult, I love it whenever people are like, “Oh yeah! You’re legal now!” I just yell back, “Yes! I am legal! I can do things now!” It is a wonderful feeling. But honestly I don’t think that it’s because I am legal now. Yes I should be a senior in high school right now. I’m glad that I’m not, because I love being in college. But I am legal, I’m in college, and I’m doing well. I’m alive, and I’m happy right where I am.

This is me now. I am more comfortable with who I am, and who I am is a year younger than everyone in my grade. I am different because I am younger. I act more mature for my age because I grew up around people who are older than me. And I love it. I love who I am now because I am different, not because I am the same as everyone else. Who cares if I am a year younger than pretty much everyone in my class? I don’t. It just makes me special. It makes me, well, me.