Getting old.

It's a fact: everyone gets old. You get old. I get old. Everyone. I've been thinking a lot about it lately. I know it's kinda creepy since I'm only 23, but still. When my mother was my age she was already married, which was rare for her time, but not unusual. My grandmothers were both married or engaged too. And I guess that if I went further I could find more than one woman in my family that already had one or more kids to take care of. If I lived in Middle Ages I certainly would have been married for several years and I could be mother of 3 (or 4 who knows) and start to be considered a middle-aged woman.

I know this is not Middle Ages or last century or whatever, yet lots of people I've know since I was a toddler are going into their full independent lives and some of them have an "almost-married" lifestyle. I don't say that I'm envious or anything, but it makes me feel old. And since I'm still living with my parents somehow useless, even if I know I'm not. The fact is that I've got a fierce sense of independence, the main problem is that I can't develop it as I would like to. Choosing an academic career over independence is a hard decision, but I would rather live all my whole live at the family house than leave science (I hope I never have to make this decision!).

So what's the problem? Well I'm supposed to be a fully functional adult with ability to create my own family (out of nothing I would say) and with adult responsibilities, with a work (even if no salary for the moment), but since I'm still living at my parents house I keep on being a permanent underage for some things. So I'm at the same time too old and too young. It's such a mess!