It is my birthday on 5th May. I shall be 29 years old, and that is possibly the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to me (or is about to happen).
Why does this feel so terrifying?
Perhaps in my head I associate being in your 20’s as the time to grow as a person, achieve, make connections, set your life out and get your shit together. It is the time to blossom, to have the magical moment where you become a person.
I do not feel yet like I am quite a person. Still a piece of plaster-cine in need of molding.
My peers look at me expectantly, as though they too expect me to be a fully assembled person, and I am afraid I just am not. They live wonderful lives of conformity, doing all the things society deems we should at this age, marriage, kids, mortgages, things that I have no interest in.
I want to go to a city centre and take black and white photographs of pidgeons and weird buildings.
I want to discover a weird bar and drink there all day talking to weird and fascinating people.
I want to meet random people and invent a new sport.
I want to listen to music loud and let it fill and nourish my soul.
I want to buy some super soakers from a pound shop and chase my friends around a town centre. But my friends don’t want to do that.
They want to go home in their finance cars, to a home that they have bought, where a spouse awaits with a meal and an evening in front of the telly where they tell each other about their days and then go try to make a baby.
Trying to make a baby sounds like the worst thing you can do to sex. How to make it go from sexy to a regimented boring outcome orientated activity.
But these are just my opinions. I support all choices, and I am happy for people who want to live that life, any life, but it is not a life for me. I feel increasingly isolated in my beliefs and outlook.
Increasingly I see people who are accomplished, grown up looking, fully functioning people, who I assume are older than me, only to find out that they are actually some years younger than me. I don’t know if I look old, I see my face everyday so can’t judge, but I probably do.
I can no longer use the excuse “because I’m only young”.
Mortality starts to become a little more real when you find yourself doing something without thinking of the consequences, and then hurting yourself.
My body has changed (largely because of the implant) but I am sure were I younger I would find it easier to shift the excess weight.
Yet inside I feel unchanged. Wiser, better, stronger, but not a grown up yet.
On the plus side I thought about turning 30 next year and started hyperventilating, so 29 isn’t that bad….
Am I A Grown Up Yet? 