Hirp Gone Serious

I don’t remember the exact day it hit me, but there was a time that “growing up” hit me over the head like a C-Core. It wasn’t high school graduation, and it wasn’t going off to college. It wasn’t turning 21 and it wasn’t my first 401k plan. I worried about it when friends started moving away. It finally hit when I started to see friends get married. Even though I wasn’t even close to doing so myself, that’s when I first thought, “Shit, we’re like…adults now.” Panic set in soon after.

I grew accustomed to the feeling, and it was pretty cool. It didn’t really change anything, they had girlfriends or boyfriends before, and the only real change was in jewelry. Then they started buying houses, and that wasn’t exactly a blunt object to the head, more of a punch to the stomach that told me we aren’t kids any longer. Soon there were friends talking about starting families, some even giving the big news that included words like “expecting” and “trimester.” But I was used to baby talk, being that I became an uncle at 15, so the thought of my friends having kids just meant I had more nieces and nephews.

And so some kids appeared, and I soon went back to feeling like a kid myself. Why wouldn’t I? Being around them gave me not only an excuse to be immature, but a reason to be. Still does. Then the calendar changed and I was 30, I couldn’t still be a kid at 30. So I probably fought growing up as much as it fought me. But then the last straw appeared. Like someone emptied the box of straws, and there was just one left. And it wasn’t even one of the bendy ones, I love those. This happened when I first started hearing different friends talk about the big “D” word. There’s nothing more grown up than divorce. I had friends who had been divorced, but before I met them, so it didn’t really count.

Even though nothing official has happened with any of these couples I’m friends with, the writing is currently in the process from moving from the wall to legal documents. So now I finally consider myself an adult, even though I don’t really feel like one all the time. Not how I imagined it.