Questions and Answers

In the watery light of 6:15 AM on Thursday, I hesitated before getting into my car.  I looked at the patch of dirt where I had planted some pea seeds a couple of weeks ago and saw the same nothing growing that I've seen every day since then.  In my scrubs, with my bag and my coffee and my ID badge and my supposedly grown-up grad school self, I started to cry.  My eyes filled and my chin quivered and I felt small and five years old again.  It felt like how every time you are disappointed as a child, it hits you and you go down.  Like falling from the monkey bars and the ground knocks the wind out of you so fast that you lay paralyzed on the dusty grass, waiting for your body to breathe again.

I've been twenty-five for a couple of months now.  I'm twenty-five, and sometimes I feel like my life is over.  Then, sometimes I feel like my life hasn't even begun and I look around in a bewildered panic, wondering how I got here and what the hell am I doing.  It's less about the difference between what I'm actually doing and what I thought I'd be doing, and more about the fact that I just really, really thought I'd have it all figured out by now.  Whatever "it" was, my five- and twelve- and eighteen-year-old self was positive that by now, I'd have the answers.  Apparently the Adult Answer Book fairy was laid off before February, because I never got my copy.

I can remember being twelve or fourteen and feeling like I was splitting in two, trying to figure out what and how and who to be.  I so very missed being little and wild and naked in barn boots chasing chickens and picking tomatoes.  I simultaneously wanted to be self-assured and athletic and capable and mature and I ached with the effort of my often futile attempts.  Adolescence, right?  Typical.  Except that I still feel that way.  All the time.  And I miss my family, and my old house, and my college friends, and some mythical moment way, way back in my life where I've convinced myself that either I had it all figured out or I didn't yet know how much I didn't know.

And then I feel like this for long enough and I want to shake myself like a rag doll and tell myself to build a bridge and get over it.  So I'm twenty-five.  And tomorrow I'm going to wake up and be fifty and I still won't have all the answers and by then the questions will have changed anyway.

But man, maybe I was onto something with chasing chickens naked in my barn boots.  Maybe that's the answer.

About that age.

Home Again

After almost nine hours, my pets and I are finally, finally home.  The universe made up for its extreme heat (I was so anxious that the boys were going to get heat stroke in my un-air conditioned car that I needed to call a friend for reassurance.) by giving me a parking spot right in front of the apartment.  This never happens, so you can only imagine my relief when I realized I was not going to have to a) tote everything (dog, cat, luggage, lamp shade, bookcase worth of books) six blocks or more, or b) pay $50 to park the car overnight in a garage.  I very nearly cried tears of gratitude.  Now I'm sitting on the couch, feeling all sorts of overwhelmed.

During my absence, a chair we bought was supposedly delivered "to the front door."  Said chair is nowhere to be found, although, rest assured, its matching ottoman was waiting calmly by the mailboxes.  Whose front door?  Or was it by the mailboxes? If so, it sure isn't there anymore.  To my door on the fourth floor?  Highly unlikely, and also, if so, it sure isn't there now.  The man I called at FedEx was extremely nice as well as supremely unhelpful.  He told me they would ask the delivery man "exactly where he left the chair."  At this point, I'm thinking that wherever he left it, someone decided it was a nice enough chair for them to steal and I'm shit outta luck.  I will be making very annoyed phone calls to FedEx and Overstock.com until I get my chair (That thing wasn't cheap.  More importantly, I was really, really looking forward to sitting in it tonight.)

The apartment is scary-looking.
Before I left to visit my parents, I did laundry and cleaned the bathroom.  That barely scratched the surface.
I'm sitting on a small cleared island on the couch, blogging, mostly because I have no idea where to start.

I think it's starting to sink in that I'm here, alone, for the next few months.  All of this is up to me.
I mailed the rent that is due tomorrow.
I called FedEx.
I unpacked the ottoman.
Can I be done now?
Yes, if you were five.  You're twenty-three.
Oh, right.
I'm an adult, aren't I?
Is there an instruction manual?
Does it come via FedEx?

My Clock is Living in Hawaii(ish)

Right now, our retro kitchen clock is showing that it's 4:00.  It's been...hang on, I'm doing the math...five and a half hours behind for the past three weeks.
There are people in this world who would have noticed this problem and immediately sprung into action.  They would have ascertained if the clock needed new batteries or just a time reset.  They would have then gotten out the stepladder, taken the clock down, reset the time and/or installed new batteries, and briskly hung the clock back on its hook.

I am not one of those people.

I let Bee run around with no pants on if I don't feel like putting them back on after our hourly - yes, hourly - trips to the potty to "try for Nanny Cait, just try."
Jodi Piccoult publishes books more frequently than I do the dishes.
I consider a skirt to be wearable a minimum of three times before washing it.
I get stressed about buying stamps from the mean ladies at the post office.  Yes, stamps.

So...yeah.  I may not have figured out this whole "adult" thing yet.  But good lord, I am trying.  I am trying so. hard.

Growing Newer Every Day

Today, I was feeling the typical rush one gets from accomplishing those tasks that have been on the to-do list for days (sometimes weeks, in my case).  I filed my taxes, I called my health insurance company and garnered some crucial information about out-of-network mental health coverage (I haz it! With some caveats, of course. Like deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums and other fancy things like that.).  I talked to my bank and successfully argued myself out of an overdraft fee, I picked up a library book that was being held for me, I washed all the dishes, and I watered the plants.  I cleaned up cat vomit, I went on a second part-time nanny job interview, I did some quality nanny/babysitting networking in the coffee shop this morning, and I filed a pile of paperwork into my Important Documents File Folders.  Fueled by caffeine, I chirpily exclaimed to Alix as I dried the wineglasses, "I feel like such a grown-up!"  This isn't the first time I've uttered those words after a day of being particularly productive or accomplishing tasks that are difficult and/or stressful for me.  But then I got to thinking - at what point will I stop occasionally "feeling" like a grown-up and actually be a grown-up?

When I was young, I imagined that once I went to college, I would be "grown up."  Then I realized that college was full of a whole mess of moments where I needed my mom more than I ever had before, and one particular semester of such utter helplessness during which your typical four-year-old was more functional than me.  So I readjusted my expectations, and figured that once I managed to graduate, I would have successfully reached the level of maturity I sought.  Once again, reality kicked me in the gut and my post-grad life has thus far been filled with plenty of material to remind me how far from "grown up" I really am: a messily broken lease, a misguided apartment search, plenty of subway rides in the wrong direction (Manhattan is a grid, people.  There is either uptown or downtown.  It's really not that hard to get it right.  Unless if you're me.), and most recently and most devastating - the failure of my first "real" job.  I have more emotions about quitting than I know what to do with, but right now, what it feels like is a huge gut-sinking-to-my-toes sense of failure.  After all, I went into it with the cockiness only a 22-year-old can muster, believing that I could handle 14-hour-days, hour-long commutes, 65-hour-weeks, unpredictable schedules, and 4 AM wake-ups no problem.  Turns out I was wrong, and all at the expense of my health, my sanity, and my self-confidence.

Trying to piece all of those back together, knowing it was my own undoing that got me to here, is a sobering experience.  So is the realization that all of those supposedly grown-up things I did today were hardly a product of my own blossoming maturity - for example, my mom helped me fill out my taxes last week so all I had to do was ink them in and mail it.  Not so impressive when you know that detail, now is it?  Maybe what the really mature thing to do is for me to accept that there is no moment at which one suddenly becomes an adult.  Maybe my definition of "adult" needs to change as well.  Maybe making the decision to quit was the most mature thing I could have done, given the situation.  And maybe just because I'm lucky enough to have a mother who helps me with my taxes and a partner who hugs me when I pout over the lack of ice cream in the freezer makes me just that - lucky. And maybe just knowing that I'll always have a lot of growing up to do means I'm more of a grown-up than I thought.