Bit Nebula

How time passes.

I opened my front door and let myself into my house. I looked at my mom. "I've grown up," I declared, slightly shocked.

She looked back at me, nonplussed.

I went on a walk today. Through Al Khor Community, the place I lived in for 16 years of my 18 year-long life. That's when I realised how much I've grown up.

I walked to the spot today, near the house I earlier lived in, where, at the age of around 5, I first rode a bicycle solo, albeit only for a few metres. You know how, in movies, when the actors are staring at something, a black and white flashback begins to play? Something of that sort happened to me too. I still remember that scene.

I was happily cycling along, my dad holding the back of my bike, until a few seconds later I heard my dad's voice from a few metres away. I turned around and saw that he'd left the bike. The only thing I realised then was that there was nobody supporting my bicycle and immediately, it started to go haywire. My dad ran to me, and held the bike again, stabilising it. I was scared out of my wits. Seeing that my five-year-old brain hadn't figured it out yet, he told me. "You just rode the bike all by yourself, son!" he said, grinning. It was only then that my brain processed the information. I laughed.

I walked around, memories flashing through my head. I walked a little further away from my old house and saw the wall of the community, a little over a metre high. I could jump over it now with hardly any trouble. I realised then, that it had never occurred to me as a kid that there was a world outside the community. Sure, we went to malls outside for shopping, but the fact that that wall separated the world outside from the world inside didn't occur to me then. And even if it had, the wall would've seemed like some insurmountable obstacle.

Invigorated by this rather unexpected realisation, of suddenly feeling how much time had passed, I walked to other familiar places in the community. I saw it everywhere. Distances that took me half an hour to cover as a kid, now took just ten minutes. Heights I once struggled to climb - only to realise that I didn't know how to get down - now were simply three easy strides up. Fences that once kept me inside parks, now I could simply step over. The kids who were the neighbourhood bullies then, now I could laugh at. Dark shortcuts that I once cycled through extremely fast, too scared to look around, now I could peacefully stroll through. Playgrounds that were once filled with children, now were empty. What things were then, they certainly are not now. What I was then, I certainly am not now.

So that's what it feels like when you suddenly realise you've grown up. I wonder if that's how it'll feel, when one day in the far future, I suddenly realise that I've grown old.

This post was originally written on May 5th, 2014.