Adulthood

I've decided that growing up is a funny thing. I think that a lot of the time it's honestly just an abstract, fictional construct. I mean, I suppose it's quite literal during childhood years, but exactly the opposite during later years. Anyway I digress.

I thought not much would change when I left home at 18 for college and my mission. A few years later, I didn't think anything was the same when I visited home. In a way, I think I was right on both accounts. I think growing up is such a gradual process that we never even notice the little things that change. Little by little though, we become completely different people that are somehow the exact same. One of my friends that I've known for ten years or so I hardly ever talk to anymore. Sure we have fun when we're around each other, but it seems neither of us have much of a desire to keep close contact. Another one I talk to on a constant basis. He left the country for a month and I honestly felt a little lost without our set Halo game nights and complaining about work via texts. The interesting thing is that the first lives close and has followed a somewhat similar path as I have, while the latter lives a few hundred miles away and follows a lifestyle that is nearly the opposite of mine. It's just that as the months and years have gone by, important things have shifted ever so imperceptibly until it has reached this point.

I think I feel more mature than my 18 year old self. I know I've seen much more of the other side of life, which I can't help but feel will be a constant pattern as I grow older. But then again, I felt pretty mature fresh out of high school. What's the difference? Right now, I'm a 24 year old husband and father. I have a Bachelor's Degree and a (mostly) real job. I pay bills, share ownership of vehicles, have my own phone, own furniture, and rent out a spot to live. But I still find nearly just as much joy in some of the things I used to do as a teenager, and I'm not ashamed of that.

I know this is honestly just a bunch of incoherent, self-indulgent and presumptuous rambling. I'm not sure where it came from. It could be the fact that in the same day I drove to my job listening to Kanye West, held down and help put an autistic boy in physical restraints, made jokes about Arnold Schwarzenegger, gave my daughter a bath, played Uno, talked to my wife about her feeling sick, and I'm about to play a game that I would have enjoyed as a grade school kid. That's a lot of different roles.

Just made me think a bit.