That is tough for me. I took a while to grow up. I was naive and trusting and childlike well into my twenties. Strangely, the biggest moment that comes to mind for me was when I got divorced. It was a short lived marriage to someone I briefly dated while I was in high school. It was a long distance dalliance, the kind of thing that can be quite beautiful from a distance of space and time.
The wedding and honeymoon were a fairy tale. It didn’t become real until we left my hometown. And then little things started happening. We used to write each other notes for the other to find when we would get home from work. We used to talk about things. Sometimes important but most often unimportant things like about music, movies and annoying people we interacted with albeit briefly.
None of it was important or ground shaking, but the communication was there. I was still immature, trying to please my spouse by being sweet and trying to be what I thought he wanted. Ultimately, reality got in the way. The problems were there, had been there since high school when he refused to drop all the internet girlfriends he had. Why would I expect him to be a different person now?
Ultimately, he didn’t like my cat, didn’t like my writing, just didn’t seem to like me very much in the end. It was a a dream largely based on nostalgia and wishful thinking. I still made plenty of mistakes and had some growing up to do, but it was after the dream was broken, and couldn’t be fixed, that the rose colored glasses actually came off.
I don’t know if I was a real adult, but I was a lot closer. I still trusted too much, still was too self centered to be a good partner for anyone, but I had no illusions of fairy tales becoming reality. I knew it was a grind with good moments and bad, and indifferent minutiae in between. It doesn’t end it goes on and on, and the meaning of these things are what you learn and what you choose to take from them.
I am not sure I would describe myself as an adult right now. The word adult is so tired and old, sure I have moments where I do feel like this, but other moments I still dream of adventures and exploring different lands and writing and publishing and having the time of my life. I don’t think we ever stop growing and learning until we die. I certainly do not want to stop. I want to look back on my life and say yes, it was not only worth it, but glorious.
The Infamous Jennisfora Strikes Again...or something like that 