Back in my day, we didn't have these fancy "DVD" things!

"I'm a 16 year old trapped in a 40 year old's body."
"16?"
"Oh shit, shit, 19."

That was the conversation I had with my best compradre Georgia the other night over pizza.

I'm getting old and it's starting to scare me.

I still feel like I just graduated from school. I feel like the kids who just went to Schoolies are my age, not two years younger.

I read articles about 15 year old girls doing stuff like drinking and having sex and think, "How disgusting!". Then I remember that I did stuff like that when I was that age too. Then I realise that I'm saying phrases like "when I was your age."

I see girls in my school uniform walking around shopping centres and I have no idea who they are because they were probably in primary school when I was at school.

I felt extremely naughty when I smoked a damiana cigarette in public the other day, even though I'm over 18 and perfectly allowed to purchase and use smokable products.

In fact, I still get a thrill when I do over 18 activities, like buy booze. It's so fun finally being 18... but wait. I'm 19. I've been over 18 for more than a year.

I find myself hesitating when people ask for my age because I keep going to say "seventeen". That year dragged on far too long.

It's getting to a point where people are talking about marriage, moving out, having babies and earning truckloads of money as something other than a McPartTimeWorker, and it doesn't sound weird or like some unrealistic far-off dream anymore. It's the near future.

My mum got married when she was my age.

It's scary to think that if I had started my course last year, I would be graduating next year.

Pretty soon, I'll be moving out. I'll be finishing uni in two years and then looking for - gulp - a real job. After that, who knows? It's bizarre to think that I might end up getting married and you'll have to call me Mrs, and before you know it, I'll be someone's Mum and shouting down a teacher at a parent-teacher interview because they've said my kid doesn't speak loud enough.

Don't get me wrong. I hope I'll still be the same sort of person I am now. I still want to play video games. I still want to be involved with pop culture and other nerdy endeavours. I still want to go on boozing adventures in the Valley.

But at some point soon, I'm going to be an adult. I've been looking forward to this moment for all of my teenage life, when I'd finally be free of living in the not-so-real world and be a real person in society.

Now that it's rapidly approaching, I'm frightened as all hell.

I now understand why Dan groaned and buried his head into my shoulder in horror when I said, "You're 20 tomorrow! Are you excited?" the day before his birthday.