I'm All Grown Up Now

I don’t really know how it happened, or when for that matter. But I have come to the conclusion that I am now a grown up. I feel like a grown up, I look like a grown up, and sadly I feel like I have to act like one (most of the time). I’ve heard that “you are only as old as you feel.” Not that I feel like an elderly person, but I don’t feel young anymore. And because I don’t feel young anymore I have reasoned that I’m a grown up.

A long time ago I remember being in first grade and playing on the school playground. As the bell rang and my recess ended I watched as all the sixth graders poured out of the building towards the play ground. As I watched these giant kids rush past me I thought to myself, “I will never be that big!” But as living things tend to do, I grew up. I eventually became a sixth grader and a strange thing happened. I kept on growing.

Then I reached the age where I didn’t really want to grow up anymore, eighteen. As my eighteenth birthday approached I felt sick because I felt that I HAD to be grown up. I had to move out. I had to make my own decisions. And most of all, I had to take care of myself. But looking back, even though I felt the pressure to grow up I still wasn’t grown up yet.

I think growing up I had this idea that grown ups were married, and perhaps even parents. Grown ups were people who had to have a job to support themselves. Grown ups were people who had to make tough decisions with out the help of their own parents. Grown ups were people who had to be responsible. They had to clean up their own messes, they had to fix their own mistakes. A college degree, a marriage, a house, and two kids later I am barely starting to think I fit into most of those categories. I look around me and I see that I am responsible for the well being of my children and husband. I am responsible for the well being of my house. I am a citizen and I belong to a community and a religion, and I am expected to uphold rules, regulations, and morals. I look in the mirror now and I don’t see the little girl I used to. I am starting to get wrinkles in the corners of my eyes, my skin is not as smooth as it used to be, the weight seems a little harder to get off and my freckles are faded. I know that technically I have been an adult for some time. But as I reach my mid-twenties I can’t help but think, “Wow, here I am. I finally made it to adulthood. I am all grown up now.”