05 02 00

maturity

The Assistant Operations Manager is 26, only a year older than I am. Yet she seems so much older I sometimes think that she's really in her thirties.

I look at the people around me and wonder why I still feel like a kid. I have the same problems they do, I know the same people, I go to the same bars. But they seem to have something that I don't, something vitally important that I lack.

I'm not complaining. I don't want to lose my ability to lie on my back in a field at watch clouds for an entire afternoon. I don't want to wake up on Saturday mornings and not watch cartoons. I don't want to sit around discussing stocks and how to keep a basement dry.

But when I tell people that I'm 25… When I realize that in a few months I'll be 26, I wonder when I'm finally going to grow up, when I'll think of myself as an adult. I don't think of myself as grown up. I still consider myself a college-age "kid."

Is it possible to never grow up? I've joked before that I have a Peter Pan complex. I've told people that I'm 25 going on 12. I want to be 50 and still want to fly a kite. I want to be 65 and still want to sit on the porch and blow bubbles. I want to be 80 and still want to watch scary movies.

This might be part of the reason why getting married frightens me so much. Marriage is something that adults do. Having a wedding is what you do when you're all grown up. Having a husband is something that only old women have.

I know, I know. Poppycock. You don't have to be mature to get married; scores of domestic abuse cases and divorces have shown that. But you do have to be mature to make the marriage work. So… Am I mature?

What is the difference between being childish and just having fun? Where do you draw the line? And where am I in the continuum? Do I lie on the immature side or the adult side of life? Does it matter?

I don't wanna grow up yet.

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