Friday, March 6, 2015

Life

I've never felt like a grown-up. Not really.

I mean, I am. Clearly I am. I'll be forty years old in 7 months and 9 days (not that I'm counting or anything). I have things like a house and bank accounts and a job. I am responsible, even when I really don't want to be. My sister is going to be a grandmother in a few months and some of my cousins are already grandparents. There's no denying it. We're grown. I am grown.

Inside? I don't feel it.

I mean, I don't want to stay out all night (the bags under my eyes after my usual amount of sleep are atrocious as is). I don't want to be back in college. I don't want to start over again, even if it meant that I would have a chance to right a lot of my wrongs.

Still.

I would like to not feel so anxious inside. I would like to not feel so unsure all the time. I would love to be able to make friends easily, like I did as a kid. When it was just as easy as "you ride my bus so we sit together" or "our moms are friends so we spend time together".

The cute boy still doesn't talk to me and it still makes my heart ache. Only now the cute boy is my teenage son, not the one who sat behind me in math class (and judging by his social media pictures and posts, I dodged a huge bullet there). My son, who previously used to tell me everything, way more than I wanted to know sometimes. Not now.

I have to make decisions, hard decisions sometimes, and I don't want to. I want to crawl under the covers and sleep. I want someone else to make the hard choices. I want someone else to do the work travel, the hard meetings, and the college prep.

I just wish things weren't so hard.

3 comments:

Jill said...

I know the feeling. As adults, it's almost impossible to make friends.

I'm sorry about dealing with teenagers. I'm certain it's a phase that will pass.

Mary said...

I feel your pain! I'm out of the teenage years with all 3 of my boys now. Just let him know you're there if he needs/wants to talk. It IS hard; no denying that! Hang in there!!!!

Amy said...

It's a boy thing. They come back and start telling you too much again. Mine (all 4) went thru that stage and now they're back to telling me things that make me want to look at them and say "you do remember this is your mother you're talking to?" Or put my fingers in my ears and hum to not hear them. Then I remind myself that I'm lucky that they feel so secure as to confide their lives to me. Even if at 19-27 now, they sometimes confide things that I think I'd rather not hear.