Last Kid Standing

My therapist once told me that I need to grow up.  She said this to me several months ago, and to be honest, I still have no idea what she meant.   I'm no longer in therapy.  Not because I want to be, but frankly, because I can no longer afford it.

I wonder that constitutes being a grown up.  To be honest, I follow many of the specifications.  I'm married, work on a regular basis, and I don't live with my parents.   Oh, and I'm of legal age to drink.  Does that make me grown up enough?

When I asked my therapist what she meant by what she said, she told me that I had to take risks and take responsibilty for what I wanted to do with my life.   Er, I thought I had been doing that.  But apparently that POV is subjective.

In interviews, the question I despise the most is "What do you what to be when you grow up?"  I want to answer: "I'm, here, are't I? I want to be whatever it'll take to get me this job so I can pay my bills."

I personally feel like this an honest and adequate answer.  But people don't want to hear the truth.  They want you to cultivate some formulaic answer that will convince them, that, yes, you want this job.  That yes, you’re a grown up and can do this job.

By these definitions of “grown up,” I guess I’m still a kid.  I don’t know where I’m going to be in five years.  I have dreams and hopes and wishes.  But a lot of that is dependent on financial situations.  I do what I can with what I have and that has to be enough for me.

I’d love to pick up my life and my husband and move to a small, lovely town on the coast, but a nice lovely house and write for a living.  I write, but only when full time work allows me the time to write.   I’d also love to travel the world, but we can only save up for maybe one big trip every year or so. 

I love to live in a dream world where what I want automatically happens with a snap of my fingers.  But in my mind, growing up is also about accepting how hopes and dreams have to be molded around reality.  

I have to admit that I’m not sure I’m going to be a Mom or whether I’ll ever leave NYC.  When relatives ask me when I’m going to grow up, move to the burbs and have babies, I want to say, “Um, not all grown-ups make those choices.” 

People might think with my ever moving work life, my constant scrambling for freelance writing jobs, my desire to find the best beer in the world to drink and write about aren’t really “grown up plans.”  One relative told me that having kids will show me that there is more to life than alcohol.  (In my POV, the fact I’m drinking for quality, not quantity makes me a grown up.)

I think when people use the condescending question “When will you grow up…”, they’re really asking, “When are you going to start to make the choices I made?”  Everyone has to live their lives how they deem fit.  Everyone has to make the choices they need to make to make their life work.  

It’s hard to let go of dreams.  Hard to live in the real world.  But I think I’m doing a pretty decent job at it.  Maybe I’m just the last kid standing amongst my friends and relatives.  Or maybe I just decided to grow up a different way.