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Growing up I really need to grow up... Talked with Jen today, the first time in quite a while actually that I had talked with her for so long at once. But it got me thinking...I found out something that threw me for a fairly hard loop. Why you ask? Simple. Because, as I wrote just up there, there are some truths and facts that I hold to be self-evident. No, honestly, not even that. The previous statement is false because it seems to imply that I actually think about it to continuously make sure that it's true. That is not the case. There are some things in life...that I simply don't think about. Not because I don't want to or because I can't handle it but simply because it doesn't even occur to me. More along the lines of instinct and habit than any real thought. There are simply some things that I don't think about, that I think will never change. These facts to me have the consistency of gravity and the surety of the rising of the sun each morning. No longer. My castle of continuity, built on the shores of certainty has been attacked, assaulted and ultimately, lost for all time. The world seems more ominous now than it did before, more complex. There are hidden depths of knowledge beneath the calm and placid surfaces of the life that I've known. Things simply aren't the same anymore...at all, and I'm honestly not sure if I'm capable of dealing with it. The things that I discovered today while talking to Jen...they're not the cause of this. Or rather, they were the cause but only indirectly. Rather, they were a portal, a gateway through which other thoughts that I've never thought about before gained access to my mind. Thoughts about the people that I called friends and what I didn't know about them. Thoughts of the future and what it might hold for me and the people that I hold close to my heart. Thoughts of the decisions and choices that I will end up having to make...likely, in the near future. Thoughts of the responsibilities that I will have to learn to bear on my own if I am to survive and live my life. These thoughts and more came at me, thoughts that I had never taken time to examine or contemplate before. but through all this, it was one thought in particular that hit me the hardest, that got to me the most... It was simply this: that the people that I call my friends...the people that ARE my friends are growing up...leaving me behind in their wake, clutching at the memories that past that no longer existed. This thought more than any others got to me, shocked me and scared me...why? Because I've never thought about it. Because I thought that it would never be. At the very least, I thought that all the people I knew? We would grow up together, gradually, slowly and at the same rate; enough so that I wouldn't really NOTICE that we were growing, like the years of life from grade 9 to OAC. While we all DID grow, and quite a bit, I never really noticed it or paid it much attention. I am now suddenly forced to reevaluate my thoughts on this matter because what I pictured and imagined...it's just not happening. That we all grow and mature at different rates...it's something that I never really thought about...until now that is. It suddenly occurs to me, that there are people I know that are growing so fast, that are so far beyond me now. People ready and able to go out and make a life for themselves, to live on their own without support and worries. People moving into residence while attending university, while not quite out on their own, are well on the path to getting there and still others who stay at home but are capable enough to leave at a moment's notice. All these people, all of them, are growing and maturing in a way that I can't even begin to imagine. Growing independant and strong, growing up, becoming adults...and through all this, in the midst of all this growing up and coming of age, I can find someone...just one person that isn't growing up at all...namely, me. For most people, living on their own comes as a natural step, almost like breathing, while for others, every new thing they learn is a struggle, but they DO learn. For me, it's none of the above. To put it as simply as possible, I'm just not ready...at all. While others may have grown, matured and learned to fend for themselves, while they have been growing and LEARNING how to do this, I simply have not. I have no valid excuses, no reason for not doing so...I just haven't. If you tossed me out of my home right now with enough money to live on my own, I'd have to say, it would be a ridiculously tough few years... I am not ready...to go out into the world and do the things that other people do so easily. I am not ready to even do the things that I know I MUST do. The pace that things are coming at me, that NEW things are coming at me is too fast. What other people can handle with instinct, ease and perfect composure are things that cause for me sleepless nights filled with worries and anxieties. Common sense solutions to the simplest things are so fucking hard for me to come to on my own. So hard in fact, that I simply cannot make sense of them without the help of a wiser friend, a more knowledgeable source. All this university stuff...not even the classes themselves but just fucking registering for classes and deferring my payments was such a struggle for me to get done...such a struggle in fact that if they had not extended the deadline for deferrment by a week, I would've been totally screwed over with no clear course of action. I need to grow up. I need to mature. I need a few years to just be alone and to think about what I want to do, what I want to be, and how I want myself to be in five to ten years. The only problem is that I need YEARS before I will any clear decisions in my mind about how I want myself to be, and I will need years to how to not mess up the years of my life that will decide my future. I have four days to do so. I can't remain as I am right now, just some fucking kid with no worries on his mind other than what book or game to pick up next or who to go watch the next cool looking movie with. I can't stay the shy and self conscious little bookworm that I am now if I want to get ahead. I have got to fucking GROW up. The sooner the better. Even now, I realize that the relatively simple act of picking, registering and paying for courses has taken so much from me. It's taken so much of my time, my attention, and my focus, to be close to fucking ridiculous. I foolishly thought that I could be done with it yesterday after I got my student card and filled out my deferrment application but that was not so. I now have to worry about finding a fucking map of the school, plotting out where all my classes are and at what times so I can judge whether it's more productive to go home in the break times or if I should stay at school. I am now worried whether I will do well enough in sociology to get into that as a program. I worry about the fact that I haven't grown enough or am yet mature enough to make well informed decisions on my own without the aid of the people around me. I worry that I don't have enough independance to live my life the way I choose. I worry about the future, that it will not be what I expect it to be. Before, after and all during that, I worry for my friends, for the paths they have chosen, for the help that they will need from me that I will give. Wondering if maybe someday, it'll all be too much for me to handle. And yet, I couldn't stop myself if I tried. I couldn't exercise self-restraint in that regard anymore than I could turn around and end my life because both are things that I value too highly to lose. Because of that, I also wonder about my priorities, whether I have them straight. Is it my friends that come before my education and future or the other way around? On one hand, my friends do not cost me any money if I fail with them and my future will last for more years than I like to really think about at any given time...but on the other hand, I highly doubt that school can give me as many good times as my friends have and my future cannot pick me up and make me believe that life is actually WORTH living when I'm feeling down as my friends can. I don't know what to think, how to think or even when to think. My worries...too many now to count threaten to overwhelm me everytime I try to think about them. When I try to deal with a single probelm at a time, it's okay...I'M okay, I can handle it. When I take the time and think of them all at once...my breath becomes harder to draw...I toss and turn at nights before managing to fall into a fitful, restless sleep. Too many worries...school, deadlines, friends, money, family...I feel like I'm going to go nuts... Or maybe I already have...that's always something to consider... I need time....I need time that I don't have to deal with the problems I can't face, the problems I don't know how to deal with and even problems that aren't really my problems but I've decided to MAKE them my problems... Sigh...I need some serious fucking help with my life...and if the only place that I can FIND that help...is from me... So repeating my first point as my last...I end with one thing: I need to grow up. |