04-13-04 @ 9:42 am EDT

I found a white hair on my head last night. A white hair. Almost completely devoid of pigmentation. It was certainly mine, as I pulled it out of my own scalp, skin tag still attached. I'd noticed it before, but had assumed it just had a golden tint. (Bits of my hair have golden or coppery tints to them when the light hits them right. I used to write it off as the bleaching effects of the sun, but seeing as I barely go outside for extended periods anymore...)

I just stared at it for a long while before putting it in a composition book for safekeeping. I don't notice any others up there.

A regular person would probably be freaked out to find a white hair. Why should I have a white hair? I'm only twenty-seven. If it was stress induced, then surely I would have many more white hairs than just one. Instead of feeling freaked out though I feel sad and confused.

One of the biggest disadvantages to being a child trapped in an adult's body is that your body is going to keep aging even while your mind refuses to. I believe only the thought of me probably dying before then keeps me from freaking out when thinking about how my face is going to wrinkle and my hair is going to go gray in only the next ten years or so. (Obligatory disclaimer: "If I live that long.") It's this sort of cognitive dissonance feeling. I look at myself in the mirror and I do not see an adult. I literally DO NOT see an adult staring back at me. I see someone who is, at the most, a teenager. (And that's just the physical me--the emotional/mental me is much younger even than that.) My own face does not look grown to me. So of course, wrinkles and white hairs are going to look incredibly out of place.

Perhaps this is the reason I have such a difficult time estimating age in others, since I definitely can't see my own age. This isn't a good thing, either, as in looking at myself and thinking, "I am forever young!" Even though I see myself getting older, I just am incapable of seeing myself growing up. No matter how much I change my face is still a teenager's face and my body is still much younger than my age is. My mental mirror of myself--and even the literal, physical mirror--seems to be stuck, broken at some point. So even if I do somehow live that long, as soon as the wrinkles and white hairs REALLY start appearing, they will just look even more out of place.

This is bad enough if you really do feel around your age--but imagine being a little girl and seeing your face grow wrinkled and your hair grow white, even while you have no idea how this could be happening. How would you feel?

I'm merely sad and not freaked out because that's still maybe a decade in the future and I don't think I'll be around by then. Do you know, this whole time my parents have been aging too, and I have not even noticed that either. Everything is just frozen to me, agewise. The only people who seem to grow older are actors on television shows and in movies. I can see the age in them, but not in anyone around me. Weird, that the only place I can witness the real passage of time is in fiction.

Currently halfway through Tape 35/64, I believe. I had something else to say but I forgot it.

I wish I had something interesting to talk about. This journal is unbearably dull. I used to love writing in here, but I just can't seem to recapture that anticipation I had whenever clicking Add New Entry. Now it's more like, how long will it take me to write this thing and get it over with.