When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?
I put question marks after “grown up” in the title of this post because I’m 42 years old and I really don’t think I’ve ever felt truly grown up. I have done grown up things and I have had grown up things happen to me, in fact I’m writing this post from a house that I own sitting next to my husband and watching a grown up movie on a cable service that I pay for after coming home from a job that I worked and got paid for all day. Certainly those are all grown up things, but I also drove to a restaurant to pick up our take-out order for dinner and listened to songs on a playlist that I created that were all popular when I was not yet a teenager (“Ice, Ice Baby” anyone?). Listening, and frankly jamming out, to that music on the short drive gave me a giddy kind of feeling because those are songs that I really liked “back in my day”. It’s that giddy kind of feeling when I see or hear things from my childhood that contribute to my sense of not really being an adult. I don’t feel like I’m old enough to do or have all those things I listed at the top of my post. What do you mean you’re calling to confirm my mammogram appointment next Tuesday? How am I old enough to need to schedule one of those already? I still feel like I just graduated high school. But I don’t even think that fully explains how I feel because I know what kind of person I was back then, before all of the adult things started happening to me and we’re not the same. Maybe it’s simply a general feeling of youth. It’s youthful energy that makes my heart flutter with excitement when a familiar childhood/teenage favorite comes up next on my playlist. I’m certainly not complaining about any of this because I think it’s important that we all hold on to this feeling of being young for as long as we can. That’s what makes being a “grown up” not as bad as it probably could be.
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