I provide trainings to teachers, students and non-profits about diversity and inclusion. It is difficult to remember our true age. All of these feelings (of age) are temporary. We know there has been growth, distance and reflection. And again, we feel 20 years old (or our actual age). We feel suspended in that moments of life-changing trauma that shaped our self-perception, our trust of others and our hope. And with that, there’s this duality of seeing beauty and purity clearly too, yet we feel we’ve lost those things and so we envy it in others.
We know so many terrifying truths of the world. Innocence can be taken at such a young age that by the time we are 20 years old, we feel as if we are 100 years old. This captures so much of what trauma survivors can experience. I knew nothing but thought I knew everything.” (Gay, 99)
You know when you read something and you are so struck because it sounds exactly like you? As if you could have written it yourself? This quote did it for me: “I was twenty years old and I felt like I was twelve years old and I felt like I was twenty years old and I felt like I was a hundred years old.
