Last Thursday was my sixteenth birthday. It was a day I should have enjoyed, but something did not feel right. I heard my mother talking to her sister over a call. I was clearly the topic of the conversation, and just as I was getting bored of eavesdropping, I heard my mother’s cold words.
“Oh, he is just a kid,” she said, chuckling as if this was nothing but a joke for her.
I felt like a part of me died in that moment. He is just a kid, the words kept reverberating in my ears the entire day. I was going to be fifteen in a few hours. Big enough to understand the life-altering importance of board-exams. I am expected to understand the weight of decisions, to behave like an adult, and yet be called a kid. A kid!
As the sun set, and our home started swelling with people, I felt like dumping myself under the blanket. What was the point of celebrating your birthday if you were not growing? I asked myself; if you were still just a kid!
My mother tried to get me excited, but I was not going to listen to her. Not today. I pushed my head under the pillow, trying not to hear the growing commotion outside. I could hear her voice from the other side of the pillow. Her voice coming to me with a hindrance that made it a bit of a blur.
Finally, I stood up and stared at her. A few seconds of a violent, non-verbal confrontation before I smacked my arms against a wooden almirah, causing a dent. I started, and as I spoke thoughts turned into words without me realizing. Tears found a tenancy in my eyes. I was myself surprised by how broken I felt in this moment.
My mother struggled to make sense of my rant. I could see her eyes rolling, her quiet indifference repeating how her earlier words were being turned into truth by my naïve behaviour. I wanted to stop, but went on for what seemed like too long. When I finally stopped, I knew I needed to do more than just complain.
He is just a kid.
As I sat in the party, too dull for the most important person in the celebration, I started thinking. Am I just a kid? Surely not, the quick, obvious response came. But there was something amiss, I told myself. I was behaving like a kid, while feeling like an adult. A hybrid.
I went through the motions, unbothered about what was going on around me. I think the parties around our birthdays were turning into an in-between tragedy, too. My friends wanted to break the monotony of these designed parties, but elders around us were still treating us how they treated us some two-three years back. They smiled awkwardly, as the question became deeper in my mind.
The next day I decided to find answers to his questions. I opened my mothers’ laptop and started doing some casual research about this strange hybrid nature existence. As I read through articles a picture started to paint in front of my eyes. A picture of an adolescent brain (apparently that is the word used for those our age).
A time in life when the brain is still developing. When a person is still jostling with their emotions, dealing with rampant hormonal changes. Prefrontal Cortex, I read the word carefully.
“Research shows that the part of the brain that perceives risk and reward, the limbic system is found in early adolescence,” one of the articles read. I continued reading, enthralled. “The part that controls impulses, and engages in long-term perspective, develops later.” I sighed, things finally making some sense to me.
“As the later develops, a natural development of self-control emerges, giving these individuals a better sense of cause and effect.” I finally reached the final paragraph of the piece – “Also, as this growth continues, areas of brain engage in emotion processing, making them better are interpreting emotions of those around them, and vice versa,” the article concluded.
As I went along, I understood what we were never told in school. We were studying Pythagoras theorem, and the climactic demands for a certain kind of vegetation. Absurd, unimportant information, but not this. Not about our body, and its changing nature. Not about the relationship of our self with the society.
Nothing made sense initially. I realized that things like these do not make sense in a few hours. I will have to come back to it. Read more. Ask questions. But most importantly understand that I am still in transition. That it is okay if I felt my emotions got the better of me with my mother that evening; it is normal if I feel a little disoriented in my own skin. Everything is fine.
I closed the laptop and went to my bed. Not satisfied yet, but happy that I had read about the transformational nature of brain and body during my age. At least I had an answer now. A starting point, and in this moment that was all that I needed to be a little comfortable in my skin.