fifty points if you can find me. clue: I look like an assassin just pointed a gun at my head and said 'smile or die'When you’re a child, eighteen seems like official, bona fide adulthood. Eighteen year olds LOOK old. They don’t have braces, they have facial hair, they’re all pretty tall, their acne has cleared up and they’ve grown out of any awkward early teen rebellions. Moving out seemed like the epitome of grown-up-ness – the necessity of cooking every meal, doing the washing and taking care of a broken boiler without an ever-present adult to supervise seemed to come with the package, along with going to bed whenever you please and eating the last avocado without getting a bollocking.
The reason I am breaching the subject of adulthood with this much loved but slightly abandoned (sorry, I’m working on blogging more, I promise) blog is because I am to tackle the adult lifestyle head-on when I finally fly the nest in a few days time. Do I feel like an adult, like I always thought I would/should? No, no I definitely do not. I own my own frying pan, toilet brush, ironing board, cheese grater and set of teaspoons, yet somehow I feel unworthy of such items – and not just because I am yet to successfully iron an item of clothing or clean a toilet. As excited as I am at the prospect of living an exciting, shiny new parent-free lifestyle, I am also apprehensive about finally having to act like a grown-up.
But this apprehension has lead me to ask this question – what does it mean to ‘grow up’? As far as I am concerned, I have grown up considerably in the last year alone. I have had my first proper paid job (and I have been promptly fired from said proper paid job), had a go at driving (not my cup of tea), drank in a pub without having to sneak in (although we always seem to end up binging on the profiteroles rather than the beers), been on holiday without sane supervised adults, discovered who my true friends are and, most recently, fully experienced the full pelt of heartbreak. Of course I’ve done your conventional things like voted, passed my A levels and got into university but I won’t bore you with that dire business.
The last item on that list, as I am sure you would assume, has been the most painful but also the thing that has helped me grow up the most. Learning how to be sans boyfriend is, and is going to continue to be the hardest thing I have ever done. Even harder than giving up fish for the sake of being a proper vegetarian, and that was difficult enough. Trying to be ‘myself’ without Him is like being someone else entirely. What makes this entire situation harder is the fact that I have to present myself as a whole, emotionally stable and likeable person to the people I will be living and studying with for the next four years in just a matter of days. All I can present to them right now is Fat Girl Eating Bread and Crying. I think that the biggest test of my adult capabilities will be having to pick myself up, find my feet and put on a brave face to the strangers I will learn to like, laugh with and rely on. Opening myself up while all I want to do is lock myself away will be hard, just as hard as being Me without Him.
I hope those of you who are also moving out and embarking on a new life adventure aren’t in my predicament. I hope you all have brilliant new cheese graters and enough teaspoons to host an egg and spoon race for your entire hall of residence. I wish you all luck in being adults, or at least more adult than we are right now. Now excuse me while I get back to my bread and sobbing, I’ve got a lot to get out of my system in five days.
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