I don’t want to grow up. I’m having too much fun in my extended adolescence. I’ve found that I’ve had to do some adulting despite my better judgement. Rent needs to be paid. I need to make sure I have enough savings to float through illness or a day off for a gig. I want my expensive make up so I need to make money for that. I mean, we all have priorities, right?
I’ve never been the one handling the money. I realise now that part of my most recent relationship was my ex’s control of our finances as part of a way to control me. That wasn’t true previously and my ex before that was also much better with money than I was – I just let them crack on. They’re good at it, I’m not. Makes sense, right?
Course my serial laziness has led to me now, living on my own for the first time, getting in trouble with money. ‘Cause I’m bad at it and I always avoided it before. I mean, my fiancée is better with money than I am so that trend could continue, except I’ve insisted we keep our finances separate. I don’t want to be controlled again.
So. I need to keep track of money now ‘cause not keeping track landed me in trouble. I felt pretty bad about that to be fair. That other household calamities happened on its heels didn’t help – fridge broke. Dull adult stuff. Yeah I need to email lettings agents and go be responsible. It was fine! Honest. I got this.
This is all part of the process. I never grew up – refused to. I’m still pretty wary of the idea… it seems half baked, but with my body cooperating and developing in a way that makes sense to my brain it’s not so scary. My feelings make more sense and I am an anxious thing – something I had to realise about myself and just figure out (you never figure it out) – but the mortal terror of having to do adult stuff is dulled to a sense of dread.
Is this what teenagers do? Or maybe it’s what we do when we finally find ourselves managing our own stuff. I never did that until now, but most folks get over this crazy in their twenties. I think. I’m not actually sure if any of the people I know get over this, but they seem to pay for things and not worry so they figured out something.
I do believe some of this reaches back to when I was a child and I was asked to grow up perhaps a little too quickly than I was meant to, but circumstances demanded it. That sense that I wasn’t ready and didn’t want to mature was solidified by wrong puberty: I didn’t want this. Everyone said this was just part of growing up and that made it painful and something to avoid. My body didn’t let me avoid wrong puberty, so I would avoid the bits I could. I would not have a career, I would live such that I didn’t have to manage things, I would let people do that for me. I would perpetually stay in school.
And now I’ve learned a way of life that I don’t really want to give up. Growing up isn’t a life goal of mine, even if there are things I need to learn like how to make sure my bills are paid and how to keep enough in the bank to cover emergencies – which is the most recent issue, really. So I need to learn this adult stuff, even if being an adult isn’t a thing I want.
But I don’t want to be controlled again. That means taking charge of the things that I let other people control, so beyond practical concerns I need to grow a little. But up doesn’t sound good. I need to grow out. Fill out.
Filling out in life doesn’t seem that hard. I think I can do this thing. I did some maths and I figured out stuff about what money I had to have and so on. Only one week on the new budget and I did it! Course I was more proud about fishing my purse out of my bag without wrecking my newly painted nails than I was about discovering I was making this adult thing happen. Life goals.
Life isn’t so bad. I messed up and I fixed it. I’m such a big girl. Or something. But actually growing up is still a thing to avoid in my mind, even if components of it don’t seem so bad. Maybe as I move through life from here, it will feel safer to just do the dumb stuff I have to do. Maybe I’ll be able to accept other things as this stuff becomes easier. I mean, it’s not like I have much choice, living on my own. Nobody’s going to manage this for me.
Come to think of it, there’s a lot of adult stuff I never really had to do until now at nearly forty. Partly out of rejection, partly out of circumstance, partly out of laziness. But as I grow in the right direction and things feel more natural for me, the basics of adulting aren’t so scary and I’m growing. But not growing up – never up. Always out.
Transience 