Growing up

There are some days I feel like I'm really bad at this whole "growing up" thing. I always thought, or was told, that having a baby when I did made me grow up quicker than I was supposed to. While I don't disagree with this statement as a general fact, with me I'm not sure it's entirely true.

When I got married at 18, I thought I was grown up. I had been out of the house for a year, living in a dorm at NIU. My ex-husband asked me to marry him and my mother's first reaction was shock. She told me under no circumstances should I be getting married, that I was throwing my life away, etc. As a teenager, I heard blah blah blah "no" blah blah so I immediately got married. Looking back on it, it was more a simple act of rebellion than really being in love and my mother was, at least partly, right.

However, I live my life with no regrets. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have Caitlin. And, although I spent a lot of her childhood also trying to finish out my own, she really has changed my outlook on things. Being just 20 years apart, I feel like I can understand her better when she actually lets me in. It's a relationship that means so much to me.

Most days, though, I feel like that grown up thing is juuuuust out of my reach. I would really like to buy a house, but the truth is I'm not entirely sure I know where I want to settle down at or that I'm necessarily ready to make that big of a commitment. Honestly, it feels weird to even think about buying a house. No house could possibly be the house I grew up in, no neighborhood could have the feeling of my old neighborhood (even though kids don't even really go outside anymore!). It feels like failing before I even get started.

This year, a lot of the stupid debt I got myself into in college will finally roll off my credit report. My car will be paid for. I'll be married. I'm transitioning, at 31 years old, into adulthood... but I don't even know where to begin. I have a job that I truly love and look forward to going to every morning, but the idea of working in one place for the rest of my life still terrifies me. Am I doing what I should be doing? Is this my life? Is it my turn to sit back and watch my daughter grow up and cross "being a kid" off my life list? It's all new and scary.

E.E. Cummings once said "It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are." Maybe my problem is that, through all my brashness, I truly lack courage. But I guess until I've truly leaped without looking I won't know that I have that courage. Or maybe true courage is knowing where you're going to land without having to look.