Nikki Yeager

If you know me, you know I have an issue with my age. The issue being that everyone else has an issue with it.

I move to Cambodia and everyone tells me "it's not safe for a young girl like you."

I get a job and everyone looks at me with disbelief, "but you haven't even finished school."

I find a new apartment and everyone assumes, "her parents must be paying."

But my parents aren't sending me cash, I can handle myself in foreign countries and no, I haven't finished school. But I'm doing the same jobs as the girls who have.

Hence the issue.

So meeting people is difficult. Most of my friends are 23-35 and I love them dearly. But it hurts me a little on the inside when someone calls me to meet up for a drink and I have to decline purely because of my age. It pains me when everyone goes out dancing but I have to leave my heels in the closet because my ID shows my age big and clear- technically too young to have a social life.Yet old enough to take on the world.

And then I found a friend. I found a 20 year old friend who left school because his career was just too awesome and school was interfering just a little too much. He knows who he is and hardly questions his decisions (even when the rest of the population disagrees).

He's confident.

The kind of confident that allows him to laugh instead of blush when he drops a really hot piece of pizza on his hand the first time we meet. And although it's embarrassing and his hand is on fire- he laughs. Because it's funny.... not because he's nervous and fighting the urge to beat himself up.

And he's ambitious.

The kind of ambitious that leads him to say "when I'm successful" instead of "if I'm successful." I've learned that really ambitious people don't have time for "ifs". We never have time for 'maybe'.

And when he smiles it's not the smile of someone who's made it. It's not the smile of someone who's already at the end point, and already has it under control.

Instead, it's the type of smile that dares the world to stop him. The type of glance only a person on the move can muster. He's moving to the top at 20, and he's doing it with nothing but his intelligence and a little hard work.

So there's what I've never had. Someone who understands both my thoughts, my drive, my motivation.... and my age. I never knew how much it would mean to me.