Is Vulnerability Age Specific?

So instead of continuing to act vulnerable, to express my sensitivity to the world, I have struggled to hide my emotion when I’m outside or speaking with people.

Again, like the last time I wrote to you, this was not what I intended to write about. I had written something about my encounter at a hospital where I went for a checkup on what was clogging my throat. But not just that, I had also written something on how something from my childhood still haunts me. I have come to realize that I am a story hoarder; I carry stories on my shoulders and allow them to become heavy on me because what I am about to share might be considered “flimsy”. But it means so much to me, as some sort of evaluation, to check if I am normal or not.

At my workplace, I was asked to write something on cruelty against animals. I don’t know but if you happen to have been following my writing for a while, you’d know that I had a personal essay on that. When I was asked to write the article, I told my team lead that I’d need some time to step out myself, to shuffle away the experience from myself and just focus on writing the article with an outside lens. It didn’t sit well with my lead because how could writing an article on something become a problem?

I was stuck because I didn’t know how else to explain myself, that witnessing my brothers slaughter Ileya ram makes me cry but when it’s prepared, I could chew the meat till the final crack if its bone, and that it almost turned to a misunderstanding between my mum and I when I refused to slaughter a cock.

I managed to explain a bit of this to my lead and I was asked, “are you Gen-Z, Ahmad?”

In the first week of last month, I think, I was chatting with someone on WhatsApp and I told them I’m a vulnerable person, that I am sensitive to words that are uttered harshly to me, which is why I also evaluate my words before they come out of my mouth. The person said, “haha, how old are you? Because it is these Gen-Z people that say this o”.

It was not the first time I’d be told to act like a grown man. One of my friends once said to me, “why this one dey act like mumu?” when I told him I hate it when people speak to me harshly.

So instead of continuing to act vulnerable, to express my sensitivity to the world, I have struggled to hide my emotion when I’m outside or speaking with people. But I always found myself holding my wrapper to my face at night, sobbing into it whenever I recount the experience. I have come to agree that at a certain age, I am not expected to feel in a certain way; I am not expected to be vulnerable.

When my essay on animal cruelty was published, some reacted to the essay in my DM with “how?” That how can you say that you can’t kill a cock or chicken? I still don’t know why because I believe some things are unexplainable. When I was asked “how?” then, I didn’t attach the question to my age. Until recently when it has become a phenomenon to be asked of my age range when I react to something.

I used to think Generation Z starts from 2000 but when I rechecked two days ago, I realized it starts from 1996. When I realized that, I asked myself, so if I were born pre-1996, I am not meant to be vulnerable? I am 23 and I know I am getting “old” but I had never thought growing up has anything to do with vulnerability or emotion.

Is vulnerability age specific? Please, let me know.