#millennialorgenz

I was born in 1995, and I’ve never really been sure if I’m exactly a Millennial or Gen Z because I identify with both. And this year, even if it’s at the end of the year, I’m turning 30, and I caught myself thinking that I’m truly an adult. Not that I didn’t know it before or hadn’t experienced things that showed me I really am an adult, but it’s a weird and unsettling feeling to realize I could be a reference point for adulthood — that maybe someone younger sees me exactly how I see older adults, people who’ve been “adulting” longer and seem to know more.

But I feel like I know nothing. I feel exactly like I did at 17, kind of lost, switching majors (who let a 17-year-old kid enter college???), not really knowing what I want from life, only knowing that I want a lot. And I still want a lot, and the problem is I want the same things I wanted at 17.

I don’t know if I can call it a problem, but only when we become adults do we realize everyone is in the same boat — we, us, the “older ones” (haha), have lived more things, so we might actually know more, but at the end of the day, we’re all just trying.

As our contemporary philosophers from Fresno once said: “There are so many things I’ve lived that you never did.” That song, Relato De Um Homem De Bom Coração, was released in 2010, at the height of my 14-year-old self, and I really identified with it — because I REALLY felt all of that, until Lucas sang: “I was only 16 and already thought I knew too much, and all I had was a bedroom and my parents’ money and a few friends who fit in one hand.”

Of course, I already imagined that, in the end, at my age back then, I probably didn’t know much. But at 30, I also feel the same. I also think I know a lot — and maybe I do! Compared to the 14-year-old me, of course I know more; it’s been many years, many events — some I wish I hadn’t gone through and would rather have stayed ignorant about.

Back then, I thought I knew too much, but at the same time, I knew I didn’t know anything. I had a very concrete dream — which started coming true when I was 27. I have a job. I can travel. I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, without needing to explain myself. I can show up with tattoos and piercings, and no one can say anything because I’m (almost) 30.

And sitting yesterday, I saw my neighbor, who’s about 8 or 9 years old, dancing to BlackPink, and I knew the names of all the songs he danced to. And then comes the realization that, in the end, we are this: a mix of everything we were and everything we wanted, imagined, dreamed of, liked. That I can share the same interests as an 8 or 9-year-old kid, and at the same time, everything I’ve lived so far can help someone in some way — and that doesn’t make me immature.