and still

[incandescens]

I used to think, when I was eleven or so, that there would come a point where one says, "I am now an adult. Pay attention to me, world. I am an Adult and what I say Counts."

Then I got to eighteen, and I was at university, and somehow it seemed that everyone around me was now an Adult, but I was just still me. Still the same person looking out through these eyes, though now I had contact lenses as well as glasses, and now I was drinking coffee (with sugar) because the heat and sweetness and caffeine were good things to have during long boring lectures in cold rooms. And now I belonged to societies -- the Science Fiction Society, or the Light Opera Society -- who didn't think it was that impossibly strange to like some of the things that I liked. And now I made my way round London and watched Hong Kong films with friends and read whatever I wanted and never worried about anyone finding the books lying round my room. And still I was the same person looking out at the world from inside my head.

And then I was twenty-three or so, and I'd finished my MSc, and I'd got a job at the hospital while I looked for a statistics-related job (though they all wanted several years experience) and I logged on regularly in the evening and had started to write poetry and fiction for Zelazny's Amber, and role-played online. And still I wondered, when will I hit this shining Adulthood that everyone around me seems to fit into so effortlessly? I was still the person I had always been, in jeans or in neat work trousers, long hair up in a bun to look professional, never quite . . . or rather, still always me.

(But now that I'm seven I'm clever as clever . . .)

Thirty now. But of my three score years and ten, thirty will not come again . . . And maybe I am more of an adult than I used to be, in that I can recognise that some of my patterns of thought have changed, and some of my perceptions have improved at least a little.

It makes me wonder, looking out at the world around me, if everyone else has that same anxiety somewhere at the back of their heads, the feeling that everyone else seems to confidently know they're Adults, but that one one's self is still a child, and that some day it'll all come out and everyone will point the finger and laugh mockingly.

This is probably a ridiculously common fear.

("You're not a real writer! You're not a real adult! You're not a real person!")

---

"His writing, as he might have said himself, is like lace; the material is of very little consequence, the embroidery is all that counts; and it shares with lace the happy faculty of coming out sometimes in yards and yards."
-- Lytton Strachey on Horace Walpole

Comments

[rob-donoghue.livejournal.com]

Not sure about ridiculous, but definately common. Hop on the boat. It gets crowded, but there's always room for more. :)


For me, the odd context started when I reached an age that corresponded with my early memories of my parents when they were of a similar age. A lot of things started making a lot more sense then.

[summer-queen.livejournal.com]

Definitely not alone. I started wondering as much when I reached the age my mom was when she had me (21). I'm too hopelessly obsessive about whatever's currently got my fancy to feel like a real adult (adults in my worldview are at least better at hiding their silly addictions).

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Even though I've now reached at least the age where I can legally fritter away my money gambling, imbibe of alcoholic beverages as much as I want, and otherwise ruin my life, I still don't feel like an adult. Adult still means, in my head, "People with kids, or at least old enough to be my parents." I'm finding other people to seem less and less like adults these days, perhaps to correspond with my feeling that I'm not either.

On the other hand, maybe it's just because the little old ladies at church still ask if I'm going to be graduating from high school some year soon, and thinking of going to college. Sigh.

Adults are "people with kids"?

[(Anonymous)]

I dunno, the other day I was picking something up that Iolanthe'd spilled and thinking, "I don't feel like a Mommy. I feel like a babysitter who can breastfeed."

For the longest time, I felt like I was 17 inside. (Which isn't so bad -- I was a precocious 17. O;> ) These days, it's maybe 25. Or 250, at the moment. *sigh*

--Beth, listening to the toddler attempting to claim ownership of her daddy's placemat and very much not wanting to deal with it.

'There is no such thing as an adult'

[(Anonymous)]

Supposedly said by a character in a Malraux novel, a priest retiring after many years of serving a parish, being asked what he'd learned after decades of hearing confessions. (I've always wondered about that quote and where it's from. Maybe your Dad knows it? Something to the effect of "Most people are more afraid than you would think possible, and there is no such thing as an adult.")

Growth seems to be accretive. You may be the 30 year old you, the adult one, but you're still the 15 year old you and the 5 year old you as well, all existing more-or-less peacefully and simultaneously. Hence the uncertainty about what age *am* I? Maybe in fact there is no such thing as an adult, only adult behaviours- which I've seen even small children manifest on occasion, and which is what one tends to show the outside world, after all. That shining adult confidence on display in others is- on display. Only they (and their confessors, if any) know about the howling three year old within.
-mjj

Re: 'There is no such thing as an adult'

[incandescens]

On inquiry, my father muttered that it _sounded_ Malraussian (his adjective, not mine) but that he'd read half a dozen of Malraux's books more than a decade or so, and wasn't sure which it might be. On later consideration, he thought it might be Espoir, a novel about the Spanish Civil War. Apparently, Malraux is prone to having his characters pause for a break in the middle of the jungle, or similar hazardous circumstances, and then burst into a major philosophical discussion. The sentiments, he said, were certainly Malraussian.

[valancymay.livejournal.com]

I'm 32.

I don't feel like an adult yet.

Of course, I have no kids, I have no mortgage, I make video games for a living and spend most of my social life roleplaying in one form or another. Even my friends don't seem like adults yet.

Not sure what I'll do if I ever get to adulthood; it sounds kind of dull.

[multiplexer.livejournal.com]

I left for college at age 18.
I left for grad school at age 22, with no intentions of ever living at home again, and went off to live in Michigan-provided graduate student housing.
I moved into my first non-school apartment all alone at age 24, bought my first home at 26, and my second at 28.

I have two car payments, two mortgage payments (we have the mortgage split in two), two cats, a mostly out of work husband and a terrible economy. I have money worries up the ying-yang. When I sit down to do bills, I don't feel like a kid. I've been a financially independant adult since I was 22 years old. Maximum amount of time I can stand my parents at a stretch: 6 hours. Money I have borrowed from them in 5 years: $0.

However, last weekend, I went to the store, and bought two more boosters for HeroClix. And I was all excited because I got a Veteran Plastic Man. Veteran Plastic Man has a 10 move! I have to use him! Then, we wandered off to talk about gaming for hours and hours. And then, on sunday, I watched the Fellowship of the Ring Super Extended Iron Butterfly mix, and played video games. I have considerably more, and cooler, toys than I ever did as a kid.

So it's all in how you look at things.

[liralen.livejournal.com]

It's funny. Even with a kid, a paid-off house, nearly four decades under my belt, and a career of two decades, I kind of feel the same way you do. It's just me in this head with greying hair (okay, sometimes purple, blue, or green hair, depending on how I want to 'hide' the white). I don't feel 'real', yet, either. Especially with writing, since I've only been published in gaming books and not even under my name. Hee. Okay, not counting the masters thesis, which is mouldering, hard bound, in the UW library.

It's just me. Not polished, glamorous. I still don't know how to 'dress' or use makeup or 'fit in' with any kind of 'in crowd'.

I do, however, know more about what I truly want. That's quite a change. When I finished undergraduate school, I decided I'd never take money or help from my parents again, for reasons that are entirely my own. I needed that independence from them, and have had it, free and clear for quite a while. Until, of course, Jet was born, and now I have to contact them and negotiate with them as they are his grandparents. I think... for my son, I finally found out that I could face up to those adults of my childhood and be myself, completely, and communicate with them what I needed for them to do. That may be the only time I've really felt like an adult.

I like how Jet thinks. I enjoy playing with him every day. I do know that I'm growing with Jet, but I don't think of it as 'growing up'. Parenting, these days, is very, very different than the parenting my parents gave me, and that surprised and delighted me a great deal.

Anyway... just a thought. It's not ridiculously common, just more common than most people let on, I think.