Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Whitefoot.

"Being an adult sucks. I wish we could go back to kindergarten and just color pictures and take naps." -seemingly everyone in my generation

I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I always was the one lying wide awake during naptime, mostly because the warped, whining lullabies on my teacher's ancient cassette player were disturbing enough to keep my eyes glued open. Plus, I still had too much energy after recess to even entertain the idea of resting. And no matter how proud I was of my hot-pink Barney from art class, I always seemed to get one note back on my work: "rushed."

I knew for a long time that being a kid wasn't for me. Like every kid, I wanted to grow up, but that feeling never faded as I grew older. At 22, I catch myself daydreaming about celebrating my golden anniversary. Sweet, I guess, but odd for a young adult to be fantasizing about. I thought I'd experience a crippling blow of the Peter Pan complex when I was 18, or maybe when I graduated college. It may come one day, but I'm still as forward-looking as I was in kindergarten.

Or maybe I was born this way and will never change. When I was barely an hour old, doctors took me away from my mother's arms and put me in an incubator, where I would be closed off from the world and alone. I hated it. I screamed and cried and tried to shove my way out so hard that my grandpa took notice. "Look at that- her foot's turning white against the glass!" I was pressing against the glass so hard that all the blood had drained from my foot. As soon as the doctor took me out of there, I was fine again. My little foot was pink again, and I was back in this brand-new world I had waited so long to see.

Now, I sit on the evening train wishing that it would take me home faster so I can do my daily workout. While I'm either running or in Warrior 1 pose, I keep an eye on the clock so I know when to start making dinner. I panic over it not being done in time for when my boyfriend of nearly three years, Josh, gets home, but more often than not, it gets done long before his shift is over.

I might as well just take a tube of icing and write "rushed" on it.

As you probably can predict, I like being an adult. I relish in the fact that I have full-time employment (although graduating college and going eight months without employment would make anyone appreciate this), and I truly love what I do. Josh and I are designing our first home- this cozy apartment just outside of Cleveland, Ohio- and laying the foundation of a long, loving future together. I take pride in cooking, housework, and other seemingly menial things- I like to prove to myself that I can keep it together.

But the problem is, I'm incredibly new at this. I just moved into this apartment a little over two months ago. We still have no curtains, no office chair, and only one set of bedsheets. I panic if I mess up a little bit in the kitchen, and I'm still trying to figure out how to balance nine daily hours of work time (this includes a half hour commute both ways) with three daily hours of Josh time. But at the same time, I dream about having a full-time steady job, getting married, moving into our first house, having children, and having grandchildren. My feet turn white just thinking about it.

I want to start living in the present. That's the reason I started this blog- so I can record what's going on in my life, what I'm learning, and savoring the time that is now. I won't be 22 for long, nor will I be 23, 24, 25, et cetera, for very long, either. I have plenty of time to make mistakes, live the life I have, and be young. I'm living my dreams right now- and I know I'll be a grandmother some day.

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