If anything, it's the people around me who have seemed to have 'grown up.' We went to this Thanksgiving gathering of friends the other night, and, as I sat with my brother and his girlfriend, sipping on a diet coke and playing with the babies (who, oddly enough, all looked alike in a creepy children of the corn way--blonde haired, blue eyed), I realized that I barely had anything in common with the other people in the room. If my life, in 5-10 yrs boils down to playing rock band for 5 hrs straight, eating box cookie mix bars, and/or sitting around a dining room table talking about kids...I think I will somehow feel as if I lost. Me, the brother, and the gf, were staring at these people and thinking, "God, is this our future? Is this us in 5 years?" And sadly, I'm sure that it will be.
In contrast, after leaving the party early, we went to a bar to watch the Tech/OU game. In a booth next to us were a party of girls (3 out of 4 were blonde, but I guess this is Texas), all were scantily clad, and all were extremely wasted. They were giggling and taking pictures of each other like every 10 seconds. The sad thing about it was, as stupid as they looked (especially when they knocked off the lampshade and couldn't figure, after 10 minutes, how to put it back on), I envied them.
It made me remember when it used to be so easy--me, a group of friends, booze, bar...getting ready, going out. After years of doing that, you start to wonder if there is more, and I'm not convinced there is. What if that is *it*? I'm starting to understand some things that I wish I didn't.
Without this collective unconscious that everyone in their 20s seem to possess, I've realized that the people I've come t know in this time--the past 10 yrs or so--are people I also have very little in common with now. And I realize that I've been trying hard to maintain what I once had, by doing things I once did. The formula no longer works, though.
Sometimes I wonder if people have kids to fill this void. Either kids become someones life, or they are the new way that you start connecting with other people-(kids replacing drinking as a common ground). In other words, people with kids hang out with other people with kids bc if they didn't have kids, there would be nothing else to talk about, no other reason to interact. And if they have kids and don't like to socialize (I imagine myself falling into this category), then you can say its because you are spending time/wrapped up in kids/family.
I don't know. All I know is that at nearly 31, I feel both too old for my age, and too young. I feel like life has made me dumber and fatter, but definitely not wiser. The "truths" that I feel I've come to understand--about people, life, love--are things I almost wonder if I was better off not knowing.
At times, all of this, makes me want to run away and start again somewhere else in hopes that maybe it will be different. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe if I try it one more time all over again, I'll finally get it right. And if I get it right, then I'll have some kind of epiphany where all of this--this life--will finally all make sense.
But I know that is never the case.
And anyways, I know that's not what grown-ups do. Grown-ups don't run away. They go to work, come home, pay the bills, take 2 weeks of vacation, have kids and watch them grow up and leave and end up alone the way they started before they had kids. And then they wonder again if everything they did in life, was the right thing.