Growing Up

Everybody is growing up. I had dinner with my West-Coast family tonight. TE looks and acts like a professional lawyer-- she's wonderful. She's barely a year older than I am, too, and no longer new to her profession. Her baby is fussy and cute and 5 months old. Her oldest daughter is already more mature than last time I saw her. And taller. She's going to out-grow her mother yet, I think, and I worry that maybe she's not getting the love and careful attention her needy and dramatic little soul needs sometimes. She sure likes to shop.

My parents are older, too. They squint and help each other remember things. It's been a long time since Uncle R has changed his own babies' diapers... and here he is, at it again with grandchild number four. I guess I'm growing up, too, in a way. Learning to navigate between my old fears and my new possibilities. Learning to take intelligent emotional risks, and learning to let my body rest when I am tired.

I even got a great fortune cookie after dinner tonight-- Use your abilities at this time to stay focused on your goal. You will succeed. I don't know who wrote it, but I sure did need to hear it. I have a picture of an abundant life-- my abundant life-- in my head. Sometimes I feel it's within easy reach, and sometimes it doesn't matter how far or how thin I stretch myself, my goals remain very far away. Funny to realize that how little adults really know and control in real life.

I guess that's a learning process, too. And I'm okay with that. I think I've come a long way in the last four years, and I'm proud of me. I just want a library job... and these days, I feel that it'd be nice to have one fairly close to home-- and in an academic library or vendor service. I'd like to be financially self-sufficient, and emotionally come from a place of strength. Right now, I'm just tired. So tired I'm actually emotionally numb, and my shoulder/neck is hurting in a way it hasn't for weeks now.

I know part of that is the way I've spent the last several days-- scrambling to pull an interview together, catching up on all my web-based commitments. There was a huge day of family and their friends, with hard news about an illness of someone dear to me in the midst of the festivities, and a concert on the lawn. My Saturday ended after midnight, and I was tired and raw from navigating it all. Excited about Sunday, but nervous, too. Dating seems to have much higher emotional risks than friending ever has.

Sunday was a very good day. Longer than I'd expected, I was on my feet for nearly seven hours straight, and having good conversation with a new friend. I think we're dating, but I'm not really sure. I hope that conversation will come as easily as all the other talk has so far... It was a real success to be relaxed and not let my fears about my own shigt intrude-- for a whole day of one-on-one time with someone whose opinion of me I really value. I can't pretend the shigt isn't there... but I can decide how I'm going to act when I recognize it. And maybe... maybe this guy with so many other amazingly great qualities will be great about my shigt, too. I'd like that.

I stayed up late again, trying to work things out in my head. Trying to separate old nasties from new realities. Trying to figure out what had actually happened, what I was told had happened, and what I want to have happen next. The first person I need to be clear and honest with is me, after all. So, exhausted again, I fell into bed after midnight on Sunday.

Monday itself has been a blur of running errands, finishing web responsibilities, making the long drive to family dinner (arriving 45 minutes early, only to find that nobody'd called for a reservation) and back home again... And I realize I will sleep tonight. I'm exhausted both in body and in mind. I need time to process all I've done and felt and thought and seen and heard. I have more errands to run, and breakfast with a very dear friend in the morning-- somewhere near 23rd. Somewhere. Then there's work to do, and I'd really like to sort and stash everything from that nasty lump of crap in the middle of my floor tomorrow. It's time.

Balancing my own needs and the responsibilities and desires I feel (including the desire to make everyone around me happy, too) is yet another aspect of growing up. One I'm still working to achieve in a healthy and balanced way. I'll get there... but it may take a while longer. I'm not all THAT grown up yet, and my birthday is coming. Time enough to figure things out when I'm 3o. Right?

...let's see... that gives me a whole three weeks to bumble around in the dark here... give or take.