I Don't Wanna Grow Up, But Being a Kid Sucks Sometimes

All of these adult stresses I'm running into recently--housing, work, etc.--are wearing on me.  Yesterday, I responded to a text from my realtor with a "Yay!" because she told me that the house I may be buying doesn't have contaminated Chinese drywall.  Then we were thrilled because the estimate on the foundation work was high, so we might be able to get a significant price reduction.  That's like getting excited because an 18-wheeler swerved at the last minute and you avoided a slow and painful death.  THESE ARE NOT LEGITIMATE THINGS TO BE EXCITED ABOUT.

Relieved, yes.  Excited, no.

It seems like adulthood does that to you; it makes you smile when things are not as bad as you thought they would be.  Maybe that's an admirable trait.  Maybe it's maturity.  But what happened to the days when breaking a bone meant you got a "cool" cast?  When no cavities meant permission to eat more candy?  When extreme weather meant no school?  (Okay, that hasn't changed.)

Nostalgia makes me long to leave behind the contracts and the inspections and the mortgage and the insurance and the parent conferences and the dishes and the bills and all the adult stuff, and just be a kid again.

Then I find a note like this in the recycling, and I remember just why I was so eager to grow up when I seemingly had it so easy...

"Dear C,  Please come back to the old table.  I promise I won't bother you,
but I still will ask you questions that I need to know.  They won't be dum.  Sincerely, J" [sic]

The truth is, being a kid is really hard.  Harder than we adults give them credit for.  They don't have much experience under their belts to give them perspective in tough situations.  They don't have a whole lot of freedom or choice.  They don't really know themselves very well yet.

When I was in college, my family went on a driving trip through the West.  We flew into Denver, rented a car, and then drove through Nebraska and the Dakotas.  And what I remember most vividly about that trip is standing by myself on a small hill in the Badlands as the sun was setting, watching my parents and younger siblings walk away towards a museum that my mom wanted to visit.  It struck me at that moment how wonderful adulthood was.  How great it was to be able to make decisions on my own.  To be able to bypass a museum simply because I didn't feel like going, and to instead take in the dusty air of the Badlands at dusk.  Most likely, adulthood was finally satiating my need for control, but we'll just say it was me getting some peace because I needed it.

I'll be 29 in a couple of months, and I feel like I've gotten to a pretty good place in terms of self-confidence and self-awareness.  Sure, I have no doubt that when I'm 80, I'll probably look back and realize how little I know now, but at this moment, I feel like I'm finally settling into being me.  With that in mind, it's hard for me to think back on being a kid sometimes, knowing how just how anxious I was about everything.  Life was constantly overwhelming, and all I had to worry about was getting good grades and practicing the piano a couple of times a week.  In middle school, I made myself a keychain that said "Just Breathe" as a reminder (my mom's go-to advice), probably on one of the "mental health days" my mom let me take from school so that I wouldn't have a nervous breakdown.

I don't long for those days at all.  Life's not perfect now, but it beats the soul-wrenching worry of childhood.

And so, I think I'll stick to being an adult.  Beyond the freedoms it ascribes, I also get to write a pretty cool blog that people read and stop me to talk about.  In fact, this cool blog just passed 1,000 hits yesterday.  Now that's something to be excited about.