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Monday 12 December 2011

All Grown Up

I’m an adult. This is new.
I mean I’ve known about it for some time, I’ve been able to vote for over a decade and I drive a car and I pay bills and I have my own credit report.  So I knew I was an adult but it didn’t really hit me until very recently.
A friend of mine wanted to get together and go for dinner or a movie or a pub where I could watch her drink or something, just out. I was unable to accept this very open invitation because of ‘stuff’.
Stuff includes work and getting the Child to school and being there when kids get home from school and Christmas shopping and doing laundry and washing dishes and bathing the Child—and relaxing.
Yeah, relaxing counts as doing something. 
She was all like “what’s your plan?” and my honest response was “relaxing” and she understood. Have some tea and read a book. With chapters and no pictures.
Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have been caught dead relaxing. Relaxing meant going to the club and letting off steam, or going for drinks with friends, or sleeping until two or five-ish in the afternoon. Relaxing didn’t mean having tea and staring at a wall, but I’ll do that now.
I’ll just sit. Like a cat. And stare. At the wall. I’m not sad or depressed or easily seduced by the pattern the lights make on the walls, okay well sometimes it happens but for the purposes of this we’ll say I’m not. I’m lost in thoughts. Real thoughts. Thoughts about adult stuff.  Like global warming and utility bills and “M” rated video games.
I never thought I would say things like “turn the music down” or “can’t you just sit still?” or “act like a normal human being, why do you have to skip everywhere you go?” But these are all things I find myself saying to my child. I used to listen to loud music and skip, I don’t remember when I stopped doing it.
I don’t understand how she gets bored when she isn’t doing anything.  I would love to have nothing to do. There is always something that needs to get done, oh don’t get me wrong,  I’ll procrastinate and I’ll avoid it like the plague, but it’s still there. It’s still something that needs to be completed. Sooner or later.
I even think twice when asked “wanna go drink?” I think about going to the bar or the pub and then I think about how much less it would cost to just buy liquor and drink it at home. Not to mention how much quieter it will be.  And if I decided to drink myself into a stupor, I don’t have to even think about how I’m going to get home.
I’m an adult.  But I can still stay up as late as I want for no good reason because no one can make me go to bed because I’M THE BOSS OF ME.
Unless I’m at work.

1 comment:

  1. I don't think what you've described is "being an adult". It's more along the lines of "being a parent" :P (I am fully aware of what relaxing is now, compared to the before time as well).

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