(no subject)

[camwyn]

Ever find yourself wondering when they're going to revoke your grown-up status?

I'm thirty-one years old. I live in an apartment that I just moved into this past February. I pay my own bills, buy my own food, make my own dinners, look after myself. I have cats. I have a bicycle instead of a car. I go to bed when I decide it's time to do so, without worrying whether someone will notice that I'm up early or late. I get myself out of bed and go to work on my own recognizance. I like this fact. I enjoy being able to rule my own life, to write or work or bicycle or whatever as I please, without worrying that I have to report in to someone else or follow someone else's rules.

And yet, somehow, I find myself nervous about it at times. It was like this in college to a lesser degree- I had my dorm room and my freedom there, and had to look after my own obligations, but I was there on my parents' dime and so felt obligation and responsibility towards them. And the thing was that eventually, the semester would end and I would have to go home and I'd be back under their roof. I might buy my own stuff, but half the time it was stuff that wound up being household stuff- music, or kitchen equipment, or food.

I live in my own place now and I have my own job but I still find myself wondering exactly when someone is going to knock at my door and say 'okay, semester's over- go back and live with your parents now, you've been out and about long enough, fun time's over'. That they're going to revoke my grown-up status and I'm going to have to be someone's child-living-at-home again. I don't want that, at all- this is more of a fear than anything, however irrational it might be. It's just that I get the creeping bahoogies that I'm going to wake up one morning and find out that I'm not allowed to keep running my own life as my own life.

The joys of life as a paranoid, nu?

Comments

[tamnonlinear.livejournal.com]

I think it's perfectly normal, or at least very common. Some day soon, they'll figure out we're just faking it, don't really have any idea what we're doing, and please don't pay any attention to the girl behind the curtain.

I joke that one of these days someone is going to pin a note to my shirt, writing down directions and instructions for someone to take care of me, because it is blindly obvious that I'm not properly qualified to do it myself.

[camwyn]

"You bought a plane ticket to fly somewhere for just barely a weekend? Clearly you can't be trusted with your own money and safety. Give us back those keys and go ask your mother what needs doing around the house."

Shut up, Brain.

[maps-or-guitars.livejournal.com]

I hear ya. I stagger along pretty okay, but every so often I do something (or don't do something) that sets off all sorts of alarms: "Irresponsibility alert! Irresponsibility alert! Take away his credit cards and send him back home!" Usually the alert comes from the bank, when I've somehow managed to get overdrawn (again) or from My Lovely Wife, when I've managed to drink more than anyone else at the party and I'm being embarrasing (again.) The rest of the time, although I pass as a functioning adult, I do feel as though I'm getting away with something.

[tundra-no-caps.livejournal.com]

You like being an independent child.

Grown uppism can suck, to me it means that you will compromise, you won't go for "The Best" because you'll accept it may not be your lot in life. You'll go for "Second best" people as spouses or friends because you'll accept that you can't do better.

Being grown-up means accepting your lot and not striving for the best, to me.

Never a grown up for me :)

[mattador.livejournal.com]

Eeep. It occurs to me all the time- I'm still in college, though living on my own and the parents aren't paying a dime for it all- but the big fear is always that I'll have to cram bck into my old room, lose my privacy and accountability...

[dragonwhishes.livejournal.com]

*pets and gives chocolate to the camwyn*

[cheezdanish.livejournal.com]

Yup. I get that occasionally too. Usually whenever I purchase alcohol or smoking materials. It's like I expect the clerk to look at me cockeyed and go, "Yeah, right, this is a fake ID, go home little girl."

And I have the whole 'married' thing going on too. That's still weird to me, four years later. I wonder sometimes where I picked up actual adult responsibilities.

[incandescens]

Yup. I know what you mean. The feeling that some day all those adults round you will look at you and realise you've been faking it all along, that you're just you, and ... it'll all fall apart and you'll have to go back home and do what your parents say and, well.

Yes. Know what you mean.

[ouatic-7.livejournal.com]

I turn 45 next month. I've been married for 18 years, have a kid in high school, two cats, two cars (paid for) and a house.

I tell myself that being self-supporting makes one an adult but I remain unconvinced.

[lasa.livejournal.com]

I'm 48 and so not an adult.

But all these young people keep treating me like I am.

[(Anonymous)]

Now that I am over the big Two-Oh, I am beginning to comprehend how adults are actually humans and not just some weird species of alien immortals. Not that I haven't known this since the age of 3, but their motivations and insecurities are becoming less opaque. Buncha weirdoes they are.

Here I go again. Calling them "they".

There are two kinds of people in the world. There's Leo and associates, and then there's adults. Hmm.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

When I was in my early twenties, a friend of mine and I taught a summer course in Astronomy. We took the students on a field trip to a nearby planetarium, and she told me that she had a moment of looking around the bus for the teacher, and then realizing it was us.