January 30, 2000
Being an adult
The year 2000 is here and I'm having a hard time adjusting. You see, this year was always a landmark of the future for me. From the time I was about 12, I would often daydream about how in the year 2000, I'd be 26, and I'd hop in my electric car and drive to my fabulous writing job after kissing my husband and one (two?) children goodbye. I'd be living in either a huge house or an apartment in New York City. Maybe I'd have a cat. My second book of poetry would be published, and my book signing tour would have just ended. I was going to be AN ADULT.
Well, here I am. I'm 26 so at least I got something right. I live in a decent apartment that is nowhere near New York City with my long-term boyfriend. I have no children and I have no desire for them at this time in my life. I'm allergic to cats. Electric cars? Don't the stonecutters have something to do with the absence of those?1 I have a job, but it has nothing to do with writing, and I don't write as often as I should anyway. That book of poetry still seems a long way away from being finished. And nothing magical happened on New Year's Eve. It came, it went. The world is pretty much the same, and I'm the same person I was in 1999, though maybe a few days older and with one more gray hair.
What is most shocking is that I still don't feel like (drumroll please...) AN ADULT. There is some mystical level I thought I would have attained at this point in my life. Something should have clicked in my head by now. Kids calling me “lady” on the subway shouldn't faze me, and spending time with friends who are 40 instead of 20 should seem normal. Instead, I find that when I am doing small things like joining a gym, or going grocery shopping with a list and coupons in hand, or attempting to get a project at work done on schedule, I'll feel a little detached and a voice in my head will pipe in with, “Wow. I'm doing something very adult right now!” I still feel like a teenager in her mother’s business suit, pretending I know what I'm doing. I feel like the THINGS I'm doing are adult, but I'm not the adult doing them.
A guy (not boy, not man) I knew in college (who was of the ripe old age of 17) informed me that 'you become an adult when your soul dies.' But I hardly feel that's true. I've known wonderful, vibrant people that I label 'adult' who haven't reached any sort of soul-death, or even soul-illness. I just don't think it's that. I don't think being an adult is some sort of evil milestone that means you've left your youth behind, it's more a positive milestone that means you've moved on to the next stage in your life. Or is it?
When my mother was 26, she was married with a baby. Did she feel like an adult? But she's from a different generation – so maybe that an unfair comparison. I have a friend who is my age, married, with one baby and one on the way. Does SHE feel like an adult? Is marriage the magic trick? Does Ally McBeal feel like an adult? Hell, she's a LAWYER and she obviously doesn't have a mom leaning over her shoulder telling her to eat more mashed potatoes! I don't want to have to get married to define myself as all-grown-up, and I don't want to have to define myself through someone else. But I wonder, is that the secret? Do girls who marry at 16 know something I don't?
When I was 16, I met a woman who was 20, turning 21. She embodied the image I have of “adult.” She carried herself a certain way, she acted a certain way, and I thought she knew everything. I looked up to her and I figured she had all the answers. I felt differently about her, though, than I did about people who were much older than she was. I wonder, though, did she feel the same way within herself? Is it more important to feel like an adult inside than it is outside? Maybe I really am looking for a definition for something that I will never feel, something that is determined by all of the things I fought so hard against in college – being judged by how I dress, how I wear my hair, how I talk.
In the year 2000 I was supposed to become an adult. But as I look down at my Hello Kitty watch, my very un-briefcase-like bag with pins from pop bands all over it, as I absently tug on my hair that I haven't really bothered to cut in…lets just say a while, I wonder if that will ever happen, or if I really want it to. Can I somehow form a compromise between adult and whatever it is I am right now and start to feel my age? Should I be happy being a kid forever? I'm tired of feeling like I'm 16, but I'm not ready to feel like I'm through with the things I loved when I was 16 either. Do I want to be an adult just to fulfill unrealistic expectations of the generation before me? Is 'adult' something I really want to strive to be, or have I confused it with something else? I'm not sure.
I just want to find some sort of switch inside my head that allows me to be who I am, Hello Kitty watch, penguin collection, Powerpuff Girl obsession and all, and be able to think “Yes, I am adult, but I haven't lost sight of what makes me ME. Yes, it's OK to have a job, a boyfriend, an apartment, bills to worry about and tax forms to fill out, and it's also OK to go to the toy store every now and then, and publish a zine, and put stickers on my Day-Timer.” Right now I feel like those two things don't click just yet.
So I turn to you, the reader. Do you feel like an adult? When did you start to feel that way? Is it even important to you? Is it something you care about? Write to me at ockle@hotmail.com with the subject 'Marla Tiara' (anything else and I'll delete it - my hotmail account is normally FILLED with spam) and I'll incorporate some answers in my next column. Thanks!
1 Sorry, obligatory Simpsons reference!
Marla Tiara
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