Faking It
When do you officially "grow up"?
Is there an age cut-off? Is there a magic number and poof, adulthood begins? Or maybe it's more gradual than that, an hourglass of childhood that is flipped at some pivotal point and then spends itself slowly over a number of years. Slowly enough that one day you look back and go, "Hey! Wait a minute... I'm almost out of sand. I didn't notice it leave."
Maybe it's a Thing that makes you a real person, the right job, a partner, a child. So that no matter how old you are these things remind you to stop messing around and act like an adult.
When I was little I was so excited to become a true Adult with a capital A. It was this magic idea that one day all of the sudden I'd just be the official version of me. That I would arrive at Adrienne and become this recognizable entity, the way I thought of my Mom or Miss Clifford, my first grade teacher. All the questions I always found myself asking would stop existing because as an Adult I'd know all the answers. I always wanted to "act like an Adult" so that I'd have plenty of practice when the official time came. I'd be terribly impressed when people seemed to buy my ruse and I'd laugh to myself about how shocked they'd be if they knew I was only pretending.
At some point I realized that there was a gradation of grown up, like when my Gen-X Uncle Walter turned 30 the year my father turned 50. I recognized that my Dad was clearly the more grown up grownup. So I set up these markers for myself about what stages of adulthood I'd be entering. The Big High School Kids, the daunting monolith of College, a Real relationship, my first apartment, and so on. I'd always assumed by the time settling in one place for good, marriage and children, picking a career were even remote possibilities I'd be such an adult I'd laugh at my little pre-formed childhood self.
No such luck. I spent so much of my early years planning ahead: I was a workaholic, totally driven towards making the future me the most impressive person possible, had to garner as many accolades as I could so that I could look back from the top of the mountain and say, "Yep, what a great path I cleared to get here." I was all about the game plan, got to get ready so that when my "real" life begins I'll be prepared. Mostly when I got to the stages I'd previously defined I'd set a new marker, assuming that I just didn't know enough before to really understand what it meant to be grown. When I got to Swarthmore I realized how much of me was left to decide on. When I got that apartment I felt like a kid playing house. That two year relationship couldn't be anything like what adults had with each other. I'd look back on these mile markers like steppings stones, just a tool to get where I was going. In fact I was so concerned with concentrating on what was in front and behind me that I never really looked under my feet to realize that the future was the present and that "real" had aparently arrived.
So at some point this year I was on my way out the door to meet some friends at a bar when I had this flash of, "Woah, right now I'm just, living. Huh..." And I stopped and looked around for a second. I looked at my house and my roomates and thought about everything I'd done that day. And then I said to myself, "So I guess that means I've arrived at my life... Weird."
And half the time I still tell myself I'm a fake adult. That I see people around me who are doing "real" things (whether they realize it or not)and that eventually I'll be like them. But during the other half, I begin to think that maybe it's really great that I don't have to worry about the frying pan to the head of adult actualization. That, yeah, my hour glass isn't empty but it's well on it's way. And that's sort of scary but also pretty cool. Because then maybe I don't have to worry so much about making sure I'm on the path to the "right" me. That maybe there are a bunch of paths that will do, thank you kindly. That looking up from the map every once in a while only serves to help me get wherever it is I'm headed. And if I'm lucky I'll see a sign for the World's Largest Ball of Twine.
I'm still afraid of not knowing where I'm going. It's most certainly my biggest fear, the one that periodically keeps me up at night. But knowing that I've made it this far gives me hope. Seeing the people I've collected along the way, those who weren't part of the plan but have meant so much more to my life than it ever could, bolsters my spirit.
And sometimes when I'm just sitting and talking with someone and they say something so interesting that I'm no longer paying attention and knock my food on the floor, I stop and say to myself, "Wow. So THIS is my life. I think it's pretty great."
Is there an age cut-off? Is there a magic number and poof, adulthood begins? Or maybe it's more gradual than that, an hourglass of childhood that is flipped at some pivotal point and then spends itself slowly over a number of years. Slowly enough that one day you look back and go, "Hey! Wait a minute... I'm almost out of sand. I didn't notice it leave."
Maybe it's a Thing that makes you a real person, the right job, a partner, a child. So that no matter how old you are these things remind you to stop messing around and act like an adult.
When I was little I was so excited to become a true Adult with a capital A. It was this magic idea that one day all of the sudden I'd just be the official version of me. That I would arrive at Adrienne and become this recognizable entity, the way I thought of my Mom or Miss Clifford, my first grade teacher. All the questions I always found myself asking would stop existing because as an Adult I'd know all the answers. I always wanted to "act like an Adult" so that I'd have plenty of practice when the official time came. I'd be terribly impressed when people seemed to buy my ruse and I'd laugh to myself about how shocked they'd be if they knew I was only pretending.
At some point I realized that there was a gradation of grown up, like when my Gen-X Uncle Walter turned 30 the year my father turned 50. I recognized that my Dad was clearly the more grown up grownup. So I set up these markers for myself about what stages of adulthood I'd be entering. The Big High School Kids, the daunting monolith of College, a Real relationship, my first apartment, and so on. I'd always assumed by the time settling in one place for good, marriage and children, picking a career were even remote possibilities I'd be such an adult I'd laugh at my little pre-formed childhood self.
No such luck. I spent so much of my early years planning ahead: I was a workaholic, totally driven towards making the future me the most impressive person possible, had to garner as many accolades as I could so that I could look back from the top of the mountain and say, "Yep, what a great path I cleared to get here." I was all about the game plan, got to get ready so that when my "real" life begins I'll be prepared. Mostly when I got to the stages I'd previously defined I'd set a new marker, assuming that I just didn't know enough before to really understand what it meant to be grown. When I got to Swarthmore I realized how much of me was left to decide on. When I got that apartment I felt like a kid playing house. That two year relationship couldn't be anything like what adults had with each other. I'd look back on these mile markers like steppings stones, just a tool to get where I was going. In fact I was so concerned with concentrating on what was in front and behind me that I never really looked under my feet to realize that the future was the present and that "real" had aparently arrived.
So at some point this year I was on my way out the door to meet some friends at a bar when I had this flash of, "Woah, right now I'm just, living. Huh..." And I stopped and looked around for a second. I looked at my house and my roomates and thought about everything I'd done that day. And then I said to myself, "So I guess that means I've arrived at my life... Weird."
And half the time I still tell myself I'm a fake adult. That I see people around me who are doing "real" things (whether they realize it or not)and that eventually I'll be like them. But during the other half, I begin to think that maybe it's really great that I don't have to worry about the frying pan to the head of adult actualization. That, yeah, my hour glass isn't empty but it's well on it's way. And that's sort of scary but also pretty cool. Because then maybe I don't have to worry so much about making sure I'm on the path to the "right" me. That maybe there are a bunch of paths that will do, thank you kindly. That looking up from the map every once in a while only serves to help me get wherever it is I'm headed. And if I'm lucky I'll see a sign for the World's Largest Ball of Twine.
I'm still afraid of not knowing where I'm going. It's most certainly my biggest fear, the one that periodically keeps me up at night. But knowing that I've made it this far gives me hope. Seeing the people I've collected along the way, those who weren't part of the plan but have meant so much more to my life than it ever could, bolsters my spirit.
And sometimes when I'm just sitting and talking with someone and they say something so interesting that I'm no longer paying attention and knock my food on the floor, I stop and say to myself, "Wow. So THIS is my life. I think it's pretty great."
posted by A at 4:31 PM
1 Comments:
Yo!
It's amazing -- the paint isn't even dry yet and you're already writing such interesting, thoughtful stuff. Since you seem to be soliciting for comments, I figured I'd drop one.
I recently saw Finding Neverland, which is all about the concept of growing up, and I remember very clearly a scene in which Depp's character tells one of the boys that right now, this second, he's no longer a boy. I wonder if that's how it happens for all of us -- one day we find ourselves thinking about other people, we start being responsible for ourselves, and *POOF*, we're adults.
If you haven't seen the movie, I highly recommend it.
Keep up the good blogging, Adrienne. It's fascinating. Oh, and congratulations on your show!
-Steve
Post a Comment
<< Home