When are you officially “Grown Up”?

photo © 2007 Surian Soosay | more info (via: Wylio)
As I rapidly approach 30 I have been doing a lot of thinking, mostly of maturity and growing up.  The thought process found me trying to remember that pivotal moment in my life where I truly knew I was grown up.  That point where I was certain that there was no way I could ever be more mature then I was at that exact moment.  It took me down quite a windy road and the journey was bittersweet.

My first grown up memory was wearing blue eye shadow and my mom’s dangley earrings.  I felt that blue eye shadow was the essential ingredient in being a grown up and when you felt the dangle of the 80′s clip on party earrings brush against your neck it was almost too much.  I put that eye shadow on from eyelash to eyebrow, clipped on those earrings and walked out into the living room thinking everyone would realize my recent arrival into the grown up world.  Well, as you can imagine it didn’t work out quite that way and I was quickly placed back into the eye shadowless world of being a kid.

Later, having long since given up on eye shadow,  I thought that wearing heels that clicked when I walked was the epitome of being a grown up.  I got my first pair at Kmart and I wore them everywhere.  I made it a point to walk on every hard surface I could and to put extra emphasis on the heel when I walked so the “click” could be heard as far as possible.  It was how people would know I was a grown up and it must be heard.

When broken hearts and sadness started coming around, clicking heels seemed like a juvenile thing of the past.  In high school it was boys who would not notice me, it was a desperate journey to be pretty, it was a daily struggle of “if only”.  I thought if only I could be pretty then I would be grown up and life would be easy.

Well, years later I moved out, married too young and realized that hair straighteners and a pair of designer jeans don’t offer the ultimate painless existence I thought the grown up freedom filled world had to offer.  I was grown up alright; I was paying bills, owned a home, cooked dinner for my husband and played step mom to a child I was way too young to have had.  Although the realization that I was only just pretending hit me hard, and when we decided to divorce it was then I thought, again, that I was as grown up as I could ever be.  This pain, this decision, the laws, the courts; this was the ultimate.  It was not the glorious arrival I thought it would be but I was certain that I had arrived at the final frontier of maturity.  I would soon be in for another lesson that life likes to keep its upcoming plans a secret and this grown up achievement would soon become a thing of the past.

My Grandpa, my hero, my best friend became very sick and passed away.  Death had yet to impact my life and I never understood its power.  It was final, there was no coming back.  No matter how much I clung to his lifeless body and cried he would never wake up again.  He would never hug me or be proud of me ever again.  I was now alone.  His advice, his thoughtful words, his unconditional love; all things that would now be lost to me.  Forever seemed so long and trying to understand the concept made me realize that despite what I had previously thought, this had to be the ultimate in growing up.  This was a broken heart that would never heal and it can’t get more mature than that.

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photo © 2009 Hamid Najafi | more info (via: Wylio)
I started partying every night, meeting new people and experiencing new things.  These things never felt like they would help my broken heart but they sure made me forget about it for a while.  I decided that this was my new life.  Independence, ultimate freedom, no responsibility – maybe this was what it was all about.  No one counted on me and I counted on no one.  Perhaps this was my new chapter.  I was quite impressed with myself; the nagging loneliness and sadness kind of put a damper on the exterior cloak of maturity I tried to wear but I just held my head higher and told myself that it would eventually go away.  I was now a grown up and this is what grown ups do.

Meeting my second husband caught me totally off guard.  I thought for sure he would just be a number in the long list of people I had pushed out of my life and it caught me by surprise when he broke down my walls and changed my thoughts.  Perhaps I could go down this road again.  Does life allow this?  Do you only get one chance; or if you mess up that one chance do you get another one?  I realized that sometimes being grown up feels much like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, and the wrong choice could bring about an ending that could heart break you in the worst way; yet there is no instruction book.  You have to blindly choose.  Perhaps there was something to my parents telling me that being “grown up” is not all it is cracked up to be.  Shoot.

We married and since that day life has taken us through so many moments that I had always had under the “grown up” title of my life’s journal; and I started thinking that maybe you never actually “grow up”.  Maybe at the point where you think you have,  something else comes along to remind you (often not so gently) that you have not.

So, as I enter into my 30th year I am excited for this next chapter in my life.  I am excited to see what crazy, heart breaking, angering, flustering, embarrassing and proud moments will make me think that I have finally arrived.  I am equally excited to see the “one ups” that life will throw my way just as I start to put my grown up crown on.  I hope they bring more the childhood excitement of blue eye shadow and dangley earrings, and less the pain that loosing a best friend can cause.  Whatever they bring though, I most look forward to the continual process of growing up and never officially having to be a grown up.