It seems like for most of my life I've been the younger friend. I've been the one to find the older people and to learn from them, to ask their advice, and to look up to them. But now, as my last year at Ball State quickly approaches, I find that I'm no longer the younger friend.
Realistically speaking, I've always been older than a good portion of my friends--comes with the territory of having a September birthday--I just have never seen myself as a role model or someone that people might come to for advice. Of course, I've been giving advice--as much as I could--for awhile now, but now I actually feel secure enough as an adult woman, I guess, to actively give this advice.
This realization just kind of hit me today and I started thinking about it.
Recently, a friend of mine who's still in high school has been has some boy drama--because that's how high school goes, right?--but it's boy drama that sounds all too familiar to me. I've been in and out of a relationship with the same guy since high school and we've had our fair share of rather large bumps in the road, but I've resigned myself to the fact that it's just going to be a work in progress right now and that's okay for right now.
But my friend's drama is very similar to one of those bumps that we've been through and I'm one of the few people she'll come to about things so I've been doing my best. After replaying a conversation we had just last night, I've realized I've never felt more confident in the advice that I was giving and the words that I was saying.
I started thinking some more and realized that earlier in the year I had actually given my little some halfway decent advice and didn't really question myself too much about it. In the past, every time I've given someone advice, I've always followed it with, "I guess," or, "but I don't really know." More recently, it's been, "or at least that's what I would do," or even, "but this is what I know from my experience," and it's a strange thing.
Perhaps is one of those things that just comes with growing up. You just suddenly can imagine yourself if someone else's place and situation and imagine how you would handle that situation because you know yourself well enough. You have enough experience in life to say, "Yea, I've been through something very similar to this so here's what I know from that experience." Which is kind of strange, all things considered.
From my past experiences--yep, there it is again--I usually just blink one day and wonder when I've grown the hell up or when I got so damn smart or anything else. This is probably the first time that I can actually almost pin point the change and have caught myself in it. I wonder if that's a sign of being an "adult" as well. If it is, I'm kind of okay with it.