Feeling Eighteen

On May 2nd, I became eighteen.

And everyone I know was super excited, to put it mildly.

My parents (my mom anyway) took me to this one really expensive restaurant to celebrate. My friends decided that it would be a hell of an idea to introduce me to the 'night life' of Karachi, and everyone I know was just sort of filling my Facebook time line with pages worth of statuses and the like.

As for me?

Well, I was studying. For my Urdu exam. Because A Levels.

To quote a friend, I picked a hell of a time to be born. Right in the beginning of exams.

So obviously, I ignored everything. And I mean everything. I ignored the endless, constant beeping of my phone. I ignored my grandfather's twenty five minute long speech on how he would take me to prep school and I also ignored the Hobnob's people as they arrived with a cake at our house (because ordering cake is everyone's life dream) and sang a really over enthusiastic version of "Happy Birthday."

I might have been a total antisocial hermit channelling a member of the Mean Girls on my birthday because I was busy studying for my exams. I had four exams in three days. One of them being physics- a subject I'd rather die than flunk.

So I didn't get time to celebrate.

Actually my entire A Level examination time table was so emotionally draining that I didn't even get the time to register that I'm eighteen.

I got over my exams on the tenth of June but I didn't get time to stop even then because I had a voluntary teaching job lined up. And then came a wedding, and Eid, and driving lessons.

Driving lessons.

Now that made me stop.

I've known how to drive since sixth grade when my dad would take me to the parking lot of this one park/amusement park thing we had going on near our house but it was always a sort of emergency plan.

You know, in case something happened to the only two drivers (mom and dad) in the house. It sounds kind of out there but back then the political situation in Pakistan was pretty bad. Worse than it is today anyway.

But then things improved and I never really got the opportunity to drive anyway. It sort of became like a bragging right really. I was the only girl in sixth grade who knew how to drive.

Monster feat.

Needless to say, I got over it. Fast.

And then a hundred years later, I'm taking driving lessons because I'm eighteen.

It sounds weird, to put it mildly.

Because technically I'm eighteen and two months (ish) at this point.

I shouldn't over think it.

And yet here I am.

It's occurred to me that I haven't had the time to stop and realize that I'm eighteen in two months and then-BAM!- driving lessons come out of the blue and realization hits me.

I'm eighteen.

The thing in Pakistan is that you don't move out of your parents' house till after you get married (if you're a girl) and even then, if you're a guy, there's no reason for you to move out of your parents' house even after you're married because we've got this insane yet kind of nice culture of extended families living under the same to establish a sense of unity and stuff like that.

A lot of people are breaking away from it but it's not something that'll fade away. After all, for every kid who wants to move out of their family home, there's always one who doesn't.

But back to the topic.

Driving lessons.

We don't get a lot of freedom in Pakistan partly due to the crazed, illiterate clerics raging around and the war on terror but driving is something all genders still have a right to do.

I'm not sure if my post makes any sense at this point but I'm really overwhelmed and excited right now because with being able to drive, comes the potential of a little sense of privacy.

Like I can drive to places alone without my hundred million cousins tagging along. I could drive to school or maybe even a friend's house.

And even though that might not seem much to a lot of people, it's sweet freedom. Tiny freedom but a little bit of freedom and that's a great feeling.

I'd wondered why I never felt sixteen when I turned sixteen, but as I stare at my Driver's permit, I can't help but feel much more older and liberated and- I don't know- a bit more, well, more.
July 18th, 2016 at 09:02pm