Up until age 27 I still regularly got asked what year I was in high school (uh, I graduated from college years ago ). Since having chemotherapy last year (Hodgkin’s lymphoma, I’m in remission now) I think I look more like my actual age. Probably a combination of the shorter hair and the weight I gained make me look a bit more mature.
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Yet in my new wildness and freedom I almost welcome the bitterness of alienage. For although nepenthe has calmed me, I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.
-H. P. Lovecraft, "The Outsider"