Love-Hate

I woke up one morning several months ago and came to a realization.

I'm a grown-up.

I'm not completely grown up, but I'm a grown-up.  I am formed.  This is it.  This is who I'm going to be.

I have a love-hate relationship with this idea.

I love the feeling of contentment that comes with knowing who I am, inside and out.  I spent many agonizing years wondering and wishing and contriving and sometimes outright lying.  But now, I am who I am.  I know who that is and I don't waste energy trying to be anything different.

I also love the absence of extreme emotions.  Adolescence is fraught with them, at least for me.  (By the way, adolescence is generally thought of academically to be the time of life between puberty and 22-23 years of age.  I found this ridiculous when I studied it in college because I thought myself quite adult at 20.  I now understand.)  I spent a lot of time flying back and forth between a great sense of joy and some times of pretty deep despair.  I didn't have the same ability to reason myself out of a mood that I have now, and most of the time I sought out the drama.  I don't miss that.

These things are wonderful.  I'm glad to have made it to this plateau relatively unscarred.  But as I said, I have a love-hate relationship with the idea of being a grown-up and here's why.

I miss the passion of youth.  Sometimes this manifested itself negatively, but I was absolutely passionate about everything I did and believed.  I don't care about things in the same way I used to.  In some ways, I care more deeply and in a more real way, but I don't care with the same gusto or the same bravado.  

I had a naive confidence (read: arrogance) that served me well.  While I've shed insecurity and gained some much needed humility, I've left behind the qualities that made me fervently believe that I could and would do absolutely anything I put my mind to. 

I'm more realistic about the world.  That saves me from a lot of disappointment, but at the price of some optimism about people as a whole and the world we live in.  

I am more guarded.  I am more at peace.  I love less fervently.  I love more abundantly.  I have less spontaneity.  I have more stability.

Is being a grown-up all it's cracked up to be?  I'll let you know.