age differences

I found out yesterday that I am 9 years older than my new roommate. We were driving in my other roommate's car to FHE, and The "baby" of the apartment innocently asked how old I was. Hearing myself tell my "old" age and finding that they are much younger (the other one is 23), put me in a tale spin. I could almost see the fear in their eyes, that someday they might be as old as me, still be single, and moving into yet another apartment. I could also hear the unasked question of "what have you done with your life?" Really I don't know where the time has gone. Somehow I ended up being old without really knowing how that happened.

I think back to when I was 19, and almost want to start my life over at that time. I realize that I have learned much and hopefully matured a little over the last 9 years, but I can resolutely say that I never wanted to be where I am today. When I was 20 and "unofficially engaged" (does anyone else have such a long list of types of engagements in their past? I have: unofficially engaged, engaged to be engaged, officially engaged [with a ring], a planned elopement, and simply planning on getting married as soon as certain life events happen. Thankfully none of these plans materialized) I remember thinking, "but I wanted to get married when I was 28!" At that time, I had a lot I still wanted to do, and marriage would put a damper on those things. Now, I AM 28, and still have a lot of that list left to do. I wanted to be amazing and world changing. Instead I'm pretty normal, if not behind in some accomplishments that others my age have achieved. What do others see when they take stock of their lives? Maybe this is what it's like to have a mid-life crisis. This is my 1/4 life crisis.

I just wrote a whole list of things I've done with my life, but it didn't really help. Do I need to prove my worth to myself because my life is different from my planned one, or different from others? It doesn't really work. There's really not much I can do about what's gotten me here, I can only "be the change I want to see in the world (Gandhi)."