Growing pains

Last Saturday, after an afternoon of intense training and then the usual dinner of Chinese cuisine, I politely declined text message invites to go out and took my weary and battered body home to rest. This is no longer unusual for me. I’ve noticed in the last few months I’ve begun to enjoy staying at home on weekends. Strange but true because everyone who knows me will say that I used to be an anti-homebody.

I think one of the reasons wanderlust has set in so early for me is because I am an only child. At a young age I felt the need to leave the house to look for playmates. One of my childhood best friends, Summer Marshall, lived across the street and it seems I spent more time in her house than I did my own. As I grew up this pretty much remained the same and by the time I could drive I would find myself out of the house, especially on the weekends.

Ironically, things have begun to change and not just for me. Close friends who used to enjoy painting the town red have also begun to opt for the comfort of home these days. Is this an epidemic? Is something spreading? I don’t know. Truth be told, I think it’s just another one of those irritating signs of growing up. Things we used to do when we were younger aren’t as enjoyable as they used to be and instead of finding allure in dancing or drinking the night away or we find more attraction in getting a good night’s sleep or watching a new DVD.

While this is both a time and money saving revelation, it has its ups and downs too. The older we get, it’s not just going out that begins to lose its appeal. It becomes increasingly more difficult to ignore our problems or turn a blind eye to our pains. When I was in college problems came and went as fast as the next fashion trend. What I couldn’t solve I simply ignored until it didn’t matter anymore. It may not have been the most mature approach to take but it got me through breakups and make-ups and losing friends and fashion tragedies.

Then something happened. After college I joined the real world. I got jobs, met new people, began to think about the road my life would take and along with this new freedom came new responsibilities. Suddenly my college ghosts and issues came back to haunt me. Insecurities could no longer be swept under the rug and all the problems I had jammed into the closet of my mind had to be cleaned out. In order for me to become the person I longed to be, I first had to deal with the things I may have never wanted to face in the past.

The term isn’t growing pains for nothing. How many times when I was younger would I wish I were grown up? I remember sitting on my older cousins’ bed in my ratty Garfield tee-shirt and slippers watching them put on make-up and get ready for a date and thinking to myself that I couldn’t wait to grow up. How many times have those older than us told us to enjoy our youth while we can and not yearn so desperately for the years to pass swiftly. I don’t think I ever understood that better until now.

As I stayed home last Saturday watching The Future is Wild (my weekly Saturday ritual) my old college friends, Louis and Sasha, passed by to spend some time with me. As we talked over oatmeal raisin cookies we marveled at how things have changed since college. We talked about how we’ve been through boyfriends that hurt us, broken hearts, and relationships that were never meant to last. And as three older (and hopefully wiser) girls looked back on "the good old days" we realized we were standing at a crossroad in our lives. It was exciting and different and scary.

I think I’ve come to realize now that growing up isn’t just a matter of advancing in years. As a matter of fact, it has very little to do with that at all. There are 25-year olds who’ve been through so much in their short lives that they are older than some twenty-five-year-olds that have been sheltered all their lives. There are even people who’ve already become parents and who’ve still refused to grow up.

Ithink this is because it is so much easier to put our problems and hurts in a little box and forget about them in the hope that they’ll go away. I think there are some people who go through their whole lives this way. Going about their every day work and keeping themselves busy so that when they get home they only have strength to swallow down dinner and go to bed. Reaching a plateau in life is okay. Not great but not bad either, just okay.

I can’t blame them. Sometimes it’s easier to forego the highs to get rid of the lows. As I mulled over my own problems and insecurities I realized that there’s a lot of baggage to sift through before I can even begin to hope to become the person I always wanted to be when I was younger.

It isn’t easy growing up. It isn’t that we only feel the physical wear and tear in our bodies. Just like our bones, which take longer to heal the older we get, our hearts and spirits take longer to heal as well. When we were younger and someone hurt us it was easier to forgive and forget but as we grow older so do the walls we build around our hearts and minds in an effort to keep away any pain. We find it becomes harder to trust in others and harder still to trust in ourselves. The old adage of following our hearts gives way to just following our minds.

It’s a melancholy realization but at the same time understanding that growing up isn’t a walk in the park is liberating as well. Regardless of the trust issues and the mental trauma of failed expectations it’s still good to know that my life and the directions it will take are in our hands. We can take the hurts and allow them to bury us in a sea of self-defeat and refuse to believe in something better or we can take the sorrow and allow it, much like a fire in a metal forge, to burn and mold our spirits into fine tempered steel.

I’m still a long way away from becoming the person I want to be. I’ve muddled through heartaches and disappointments more than once and know that it will inevitably pass. I struggle to allow myself to continue to believe in people even though I’ve been hurt in the past and to open my heart to the possibility that trust won’t bring about regret. At the same time, I remind myself that everyone has to advance at their own pace. Living is a personal thing and not everyone does things the same way. The best way to show you care is by allowing people to deal with their issues in their own time.

To grow up is a decision. It doesn’t just happen. I know that the road to self-actualization is probably paved with hurt but at the same time the goal, the mere possibility of making my dreams come true, should definitely be worth the cost.