Tonight, my brother in law called and we were chatting about this and that and one of the topics we spoke about got me to thinking about how I'm getting older. Or rather, am older, then I once was. This may seem like a "Duh" moment, but seriously. Just now, as I was brushing my teeth, I smiled at myself in the mirror and for the first time I saw a wrinkle around my mouth...and I wanted to cry. Then, I looked at my hair, and saw all these "beautiful" slivers of gray. I feel SOO much like that country song, you know the one, "I'm much to young to feel this d*#@ old". I started thinking about my life and how I'm 26. I just read a novel this week, not one that I recommend so I'm going to leave the name, but in this novel, 3 best friends, live in New York and have wonderful social lives, live in fabulous "flats" and all have exciting careers. They were all 30. This also made me feel old. I am 4 years younger but feel like I'm 24 years older. What happened? I remember being in college, not having any cares except if I was going to have money for the weekend trip to Abilene. Now, I'm worried constantly about money: Do we have money for groceries this week? Will we have enough for rent next month? I hope we don't use to much money on gas because we'll be out of luck...And on top of money worries, I worry about whether I'm doing a good enough job at keeping the apartment cleaned up (most likely not by the way) or if I'm being patient and loving enough to my husband (something I'm sure I fail at daily) or what happens if I just don't go to work? Is that allowed? (Which of course, IT'S NOT!!).
Getting older...I just told my husband what I'm posting and he says "But isn't that what you want when you're little? You can't wait to grow up and drive places?" I told him "I honestly don't know if I ever wanted to grow up!!" I loved the independence of adolescence and early adulthood (really, psychologically speaking, I'm referring to later adolescence). I just went and pulled an old text book about the stages of life and it talks about how my age group of individuals (ages 24-34) should be dealing with:
- Exploring intimate relationships
- Childbearing
- Work
- Lifestyle
My psychological crisis is : Intimacy vs. Isolation
All of this may seem insignificant but honestly, I find this information some what comforting. Aside for the childbearing, which, let's be honest, I don't see happening, I'm right where I'm "supposed" to be with my peers. The 30 year olds who are still having very active social lives and are career hopping are actually BEHIND in their development and our society has seen fit to no only embrace this delay but often ENCOURAGE it (such as in the novel I recently read). I guess I should have paid more attention to Mrs. Sneed's HBSE II class and maybe I wouldn't have had this little melt down tonight!
Oh the Sneeds...I miss this. Maybe that will be a blog one day. Sharing my favorite stories from college (including my college profs. They were pretty great...)
Love, Mrs. M.
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