All Grown Up

As I was browsing through my Google Reader today I came across Danielle’s (sometimessweet.com) post about growing up. I felt a little inspired to touch base on this topic as well because, I too, cannot believe that I’m technically a grown up. I’m twenty-three now and I feel like I will be thirty before I know it. The time just seems to be flying these days. I remember so much of my young childhood, and then feeling like I woke up as a teenager. I felt like I would never be able to just grow up and do the things I wanted to do. And yet, here I am! The funnier thing being that now that I’m finally grown up, I sometimes wish I could go back to that simpler time! Maybe just for a day though.. let’s not get too carried away. ;]

But anyway, I think about these types of things all of the time- how strange it is that weeks, months, and years just get away from us before we even know what happened. I used to have a theory that everything happened at once- everything in the history of time. Kind of like we were born, we lived, and we died all in an instant and that we just experience this instantaneous burst of life and death in extremely slow motion. Weird, right? And if that’s the case, please someone build a time machine and test my theory because I think the two would correlate well! I think my theory would also work pretty well in relation to the Bible- but I’m certainly no Bible Scholar so don’t slam me with facts here. ;] This is just something silly I used to think about when I was young. I think having a lot of people close to you pass away at such a young age sort of warps your thoughts on life. It makes you strangely (almost morbidly) aware and obsessed with how fragile life is. I’m a lot less paranoid than I used to be, but I still have those weird thoughts when I say goodbye to someone, “What if this is the last time I see this person?” … Yes I KNOW. What a terrible thought process.

All in all- I’m excited to be all grown up. It’s funny to think back on my teenage years and how it seemed that those were the most important days of my life (certainly the most dramatic). I’d give anything to be able to truly prove to my own son or daughter one day that high school is not forever and none of this stuff will even matter to you in a few years. I wasted so much energy on the silliest things. The silliest relationships. I’m sure I’m due for my payback though on all of the times I said, “Whatever, Mom!” and did what I knew was right. At least I was right about my move to Kentucky- I’d never felt so sure of anything in my life. Not saying I never doubted my decision, but if I had still been thinking like my teenage-self I probably would’ve ran when things got hard. I’m proud of myself for being able to recognize real love and stick with it- I think that may be when I truly started to grow up. And here we are- married! It truly amazes me every day.