On feeling like a little child again

I wrote this April 19th, had no internet connection

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I know you didn’t ask, but I thought I’d tell you nonetheless.

I’m almost 36 years old.

True, today someone asked me if I was 18, and its true that I don’t look my age… but believe me (and my aching back, sensitive feet, and the sound I make every time I get up from a chair)… I am 36.

Most days I go about my life feeling 36 only in my body, and not in my maturity level, not in my life experiences, and certainly not with ‘where’ I’m at in life. But for the most part, I do feel like an adult, one who is dependable and can take care of herself and of others around her; I feel like my intentions in life are good and that I’m smart and can get things done.

How is it then, that in the first few hours of seeing an aunt of mine after a long absence (almost 10 years) I was made to feel like a bumbling idiot child who sorely disappointed this person who helped raise me? I feel incompetent, I feel lacking, I feel young. I feel hurt and angry too.  The part that is ME, that has become me as an adult who wages a daily war to stand up for herself and to be heard, wants so badly to tell her off and to shrug her off. But the young part of me who remembers daily the many things she taught me and did for me, and who sees her struggling not to cry and knows that she is fighting cancer… that part of me is just swallowing as much as possible (though I’m sure my eyes are betraying me here and there) and trying so hard to let it go. But I needed to tell someone how crazy it is that there are certain people who can make you feel like a little child again, just learning to walk, needing guidance, and having all control removed. And how utterly demoralizing to think that most of those people tend to be family members.

I’m a family member too. I’m a single aunt too. I’m an auntie who is over-involved and helping to raise her nieces and nephews TOO.  I, too, am a strict presence in their lives.

Am I my aunt in making, too?

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