What are you never too old for?
My answer:
Lots of things. A lot of people tell me stuff like that I am an old soul or something, and I was rather precocious as a kid and was always considered more or less above average intellectually at school or by my family, but then on the other hand, I’ve always received very contradictory opinions on my emotional maturity – like my Mum claims I’m emotionallyy immature but then she always says she’s so grateful that I live here because otherwise she’d have no one to give her advice, and I guess advice giving does require some emotional maturity. – I always joke that I should probably become a relationship counsellor because it’s quite weird how I’ve had a lot of people in my life, including my own Mother, who come to me and want advice on what they’re supposed to do with something in their relationship. The thing that’s so funny about it, is that I’ve never been in a romantic relationship myself, nor have I ever dated anyone even for a while. 😀 Personally, I am also not sure what is actually the deal with me regarding emotional maturity, I guess generally my development in all areas was a bit uneven or not very typical as a child so that may be why.
I was always also very childish, and in a lot of ways, still am, and am not planning to get rid of it any time soon, even if I knew how, even though it often makes me feel kind of conflicted internally to feel both a lot more mature than most people my age and a lot younger than them.
When it comes to the more childish side of me, I call her Bibiel. She’s very playful, sometimes a bit cheeky, has a weird sense of humour, is quite creative, and slightly more spontaneous and outgoing than me as in me. I also often call myself Bibiel as in the third person, like “Bibiel has to do this” “Bibiel likes that”. I used to do that almost all the time when I was younger, and people saw it in a lot of different ways – some thought it was cute, some thought it was too childish, some thought it was annoying as hell, some thought it was a sort of artistic expression of myself especially when I did this in writing, and some thought it was sick. – If you ask me, I don’t know, it’s just… well Bibiel. Over time, I did unlearn it enough that I don’t do this ALL of the time but I still do in some situations, like on an impulse – when I’m really surprised by something, or really happy or excited or when it just doesn’t make sense any other way than to say Bibiel – or with people who know what’s the deal with Bibiel and are okay with it like Sofi and some of my friends. It’s a bit less of a thing for me in English though. Sometimes in English I use Bibielle because it looks more feminine, just like I tried to be a Bibielka rather than Bibiel in Polish, especially since I’ve discovered that Bibiel actually is a thing in Brazil, as a masculine name, lol, but Bibiel just stuck years ago. It’s also funny because my Dad, who is generally not the most flexible person in the world, so you’d think he wouldn’t have understanding for someone calling themselves Bibiel in the third person, especially that, when I changed my name legally to Emilia when I was 18, he does accept it now but I guess has never come to terms with it, meanwhile he does call me Bibiel a lot, while my Mum, who is very open-minded, doesn’t at all and she really doesn’t like the whole Bibiel thing. So yeah, I’m never too old for Bibiel, or maybe Bibiel’s never too young for me.
I’m really glad that I have Sofi and that she’s sort of similar to me in this one aspect, that, despite she’s a teenager, she’s also quite childish in a lot of ways, while at the same time being more mature than her peers. This is a large part of why we get along so well, despite we’re ten years apart. I’m never too old for playing with Sofi, and we have a lot of totally crazy games. Like that one I’ve told you about a few times – that Misha can have a brain connection with either of us, through which he can talk and also perceive the world through us and, if he wants, also move our bodies. – Usually it’s me who ends up lending my brain to Misha, because Misha mostly talks to Sofi, and Sofi doesn’t feel comfortable talking to herself pretending to be two people. 😀 This way, we can incorporate Misha into our games, and also sometimes, I secretly use Misha as an educational/psychological tool, because Sofi often is more likely to listen to Misha giving her subtle cues on something rather than Mum or me lecturing her, and is also more likely to talk to Misha about her problems.
We also do a lot of roleplaying, often in a very exaggerated way which is totally on purpose.
We laugh a lot as well. Sofi really likes Misha and me to come to her bedroom at night and lie with her before she falls asleep, and then we play or she reads a book – because she doesn’t like reading by herself – or we talk about life, or I tell her a story about Jim the Jimmosaurus (the one who lives in Australia and feeds on helping others I wrote a post on him years ago I think). And often while we do all that stuff, we end up having real fits of laughter, sometimes we can’t even remember why. We’ll just laugh for a long time and won’t be able to stop, sometimes it really doesn’t take much to ellicit such a reaction.
Sometimes we do silly things like jumping on one of us’ bed, sliding down the handrails or pranking people we both know with creepy or just weird emails from accounts we’ve got just for this sole purpose or making competitions who can scream louder and for longer, writing funny parodies of songs etc.
Aside from all things Sofi, I am very imaginative which is often considered more of a children’s trait. I even still have my Brainworld, which isn’t as complex as it was when I was a child and really needed it, but it still is complex and I still do love to go in there and it does still develop a little bit. I’ve heard a lot of people who had such paracosms and most of them grew out of it, I hope I won’t.
Similar thing is with fazas. I remember getting really scared when I was like 14 I guess, when I got my first ever major faza and was talking about it with my Godmother, who was a bit of an authority for me at the time, and at some point she told me something like “Yeah… I also remember getting so fascinated with things or people at your age, or very inspired.” Me: “So why aren’t you still?” Her: “Such things go away, y’know? At some point you’ve just got to deal with real life, so you should appreciate this while you’re a kid”. I just couldn’t imagine that I could just grow out of this. And then I had another faza, and another, and another, and by the third one I was already an adult, and that one was especially powerful and intense and fruitful so I was comforting myself that maybe for some people it goes away, but not for me, plus, my faza experiences are a bit different than your usual fascination. And then I was going without or almost without a faza for what felt like ages, but I guess was only about a year (when my faza on Gwil started fading and before I developed a faza on Jacob), and got a real scare that this time had finally come. I was totally not ready for it, because my fazas play an important role in my life so it felt like someone screwed up or completely switched of something that was driving me. So it was an extreme relief to get a new faza again, finally. And now I really don’t think I’ll grow out of it. Also I don’t want to think about it because it’s scary. Generally perhaps part of why I’m childish in so many ways is because I do like to hold on to things and I mostly dislike changes.
in general, I just don’t tend to care overly about what I’m too old or too young for. Maybe because I don’t really care much in general about people’s age, because numbers and math as a whole mean very little to me.
Oh yeah, and I’m also not too old for having a teddy bear, even though I no longer sleep with him because I have Misha, but I do believe it would be horrible if I just threw him into the bin just because I have Misha or, worse even, because my age has changed, despite how much of a comfort he’d been for me, so PimpuÅ› is now in retirement and has his honourary place on one of my shelves. And I’m never gonna be too old for children’s or YA books, I read a lot of them.
You? 🙂
My Inner MishMash 