To the girl who grew up too fast

Emotionally intelligent kids grow into ‘childish’ adults'

Everyone calls me immature. It’s been a running theme since I hit an age where I was expected to carry myself differently. I laugh when I shouldn’t, I say things that make me come across ditsy - which pains me, cause I’m the opposite, I replay social interactions in my head and think of “better ways” I could have handled it. I’m loud, I’m energetic (I’m a leo), I tend to not take anything too seriously (within reason).

Sometimes I freeze when I’m meant to respond. I smile when things are heavy, and sometimes my reactions come out… wrong. I go along with things I don’t want to because setting boundaries feels painfully exhausting. I say silly things. I’m impulsive. But on top of that, according to everyone else, I’m childish.

“It’s like you’re away with the fairies, Courtney”. “You live in la-la land”. I have been told this countless times.

Film: Uptown Girl, 2003

What people don’t see is that I was never an immature child. I was the opposite.

I was emotionally fluent before I knew my times tables. I could sense sadness before it was spoken. I knew when to perform, I knew when to shut up. I knew when to become smaller or brighter depending on what the adults around me needed.

I became the star performer. I would sing and dance for my mum because I could see my mum was sad, an emptiness inside her because of my dads violent abuse - and if I could make her laugh, even for a second, then maybe everything would be okay.

And I did. She found me funny. I felt like I was healing the world in those moments. If I had pocket money, I would buy my mum’s favourite snacks. I would surprise her. I remember a family friend gave me £30 for my birthday, and I immediately wanted to buy my mum and my younger brother a takeaway for dinner. I didn’t want toys, a barbie magazine or sweets. I wanted everyone to be happy 24/7. I would rush to help her with my little brother, and I was her shoulder to cry on if she ever needed to vent. I was a 7 year old therapist.

Baby Courtney

That kind of awareness doesn’t come from nowhere. When you grow up attuned to everyone else’s emotions, you don’t get to fully inhabit your own. I learned from an early age that love is something you earn by being pleasant, entertaining, low-maintenance, and emotionally strong. I see this trauma come out in my friendships, I go above and beyond because I think everyone’s happiness is my responsibility. So when people meet me now in my twenties, navigating adulthood with a nervous laugh, a loud performance and a delayed emotional response - they assume I’m immature. But what they’re actually seeing is my frozen nervous system.

Trauma doesn’t always make you hardened or closed off. Sometimes it keeps you stuck at the age where you learned how to survive.

For me, that survival looks like:

• Laughing instead of crying

• Smiling instead of setting boundaries

• Being “fun” instead of being honest

• Acting light when things feel unbearably heavy

It’s not that I don’t understand seriousness. Believe me, I do. It’s just that sometimes seriousness feels like danger to me and I immediately look for a way to fix it.

What really gets under my skin is when people call me immature like it’s some kind of diagnosis. Because I know what I’ve lived through. I know the abuse I’ve had to endure, I know I’ve had to accept I’m in my 20’s with two dead parents. I know the rooms I’ve had to grow up in. I know the conversations I’ve had too early, the losses I’ve buried quietly, and the emotional labour I did before I had adult language for it.

A lot of people my age haven’t had to touch that kind of reality yet, and I don’t say that with superiority, I’m actually saying it with exhaustion. I’m tired. I’ve seen enough seriousness. Lightness is how I chose to survive. I think sometimes “immature” is just what people say when a woman doesn’t perform trauma the way they expect her to.

If I were quieter and maybe more visibly damaged, maybe I’d be taken more seriously. But because I’m airy, because I joke, it’s easier to just dismiss me.

So yeah, maybe I am immature. But I can recognise it’s beautiful that I can still attempt to find joy and a lightness after all the heavy stuff I’ve had to carry.