There are days when I feel so young, like a 12-year-old in a world full of grown-ups. I can’t quite get my stuff together, I’m always playing catch up and worrying that people will notice that I don’t know what I’m doing. In other words, some days I feel like Ally McBeal — all confusion and no direction. Thankfully, that’s only some days. And I do a better job at faking my way through life than Ally does (based on a whole 3 episodes I’ve seen). The truth is that I don’t feel like an adult, or at least the way I always thought an adult would feel like. I don’t really know anything – in fact, the older I become, the more questions I have. When does this go away?
On other days I look around and wonder when I got so old. I watch the teenyboppers go around like they own the world and remember being that way just yesterday. When did people start calling me Ma’am? When did I become the chaperone, the designated grown-up, the responsible person? Surely it can’t be that I graduated from college — it can’t be that simple. When did the salespeople start attending me immediately instead of looking at me like I couldn’t afford anything anyway? I look at my little brother and shudder to think of what he’s going to go through (he’s 13). I give him advice like my mother gave me — i.e. boring and safe. And I swear that I’m saying the exact words my mother yelled at me. When did that happen?
So I stand with one foot in childhood (which I refuse to give up) and one foot in adultdom (which I’m not too sure I want anyway) and wonder if anyone else feels this way. At what point do I sit down and say: okay, this is what I am I am an adult or a young adult or a whatever and that’s that? Soon, I hope. I hate the idea of going around like some Ally McBeal doesn’t-wanna-be.
