02 October 2002 - 12:31

I feel like an adult.

No, really.

Remember, when you were little, you wondered when that would happen. Maybe when you learned to drive, you would feel like an adult. Maybe when you moved out of your parents' house, you would feel like an adult. Maybe when you had sex you would feel like an adult. Maybe when you got a job you would feel like an adult. And it didn't happen.

I live in a house with ammenities like a washing machine (which doesn't take quarters), an oven, a lawn, a garage. I share the house with two quiet responsible intelligent people (Nootropil and his brother) and Wheel (my husband-to-be, as adult as THAT is). I go to bed early and wake up early. Wheel gets up early and goes to a real job. Real because it's a position of authority, at least relative to childhood; real because it's one of the things that someone on Sesame Street might have wanted to be when he grew up (the teacher part, I mean, not so much the substitute part). Real because people don't moan so much when they ask him what he does with a bachelor's in history and he tells them. Real because he's making double-digits an hour (well, it's a first for us, okay?).

We eat three square meals a day, keep the house clean, dishes done, laundry washed, grass cut. No longer living on campus, we see our friends only occasionally, and party very little. The new sleep schedule fits in there too. I'm not really going to classes properly, as I've mentioned. I didn't intend for it to work out that way, but it has. I'm working a little more than half time (paid), plus sorting Gillian's office when I can. I've been working on my thesis (but not enough) and studying for the GRE (which I take in six days).

I'm not grown up in as much as my parents are still paying my rent, but you know, I could pay it, and still buy groceries too, so that doesn't detract as much as it might.

I feel like an adult. I feel like I've arrived somewhere, and I'm disoriented. I figured I would feel this way about nine months from now, when I'm 21 (January), when I've graduated (May), when I'm married (May) (bam-bam-bam, just like that).

Perhaps it's more that I don't feel like a College Student anymore? I'm not Going To College, but rather, Working On My Thesis (or I should be). After next May, my great grant scheme which I have been following (roughly) for seven years starts to thin out, with vague directives about going to graduate school, doing dolphin research of some kind, and building a house.

I'm afraid of not moving on. I think I could be still and content, not forever, but for a while. I think it would kill me.