My expectation of becoming an adult was very different than that of almost every person I knew growing up. The image of the "adulthood" dream was born of childhood stories told by my grandfather of his formative years spent amidst the glamour and wealth of New York's Jazz Age, fueled with scenes from countless books and a summer spent in the Mid-Atlantic suburbs.
I longed to move. I longed to shake the fine red dust off my heels, throw off the confining expectations of small town life, don a suit and high-heeled shoes and conquer the world. (Funny how my imaginations of adulthood never included the flannel pajama bottoms I find myself wearing with alarming regularity on the weekends).
Everything I did in my formative youth was directed toward that dream. Everything. Every extra-curricular activity I participated in. Every school assignment. Every motivation behind choosing a college.
I wanted a life no one I knew had. I wanted to break free of small town mediocrity, of a life of "average" and live somewhere, do something, be someone extraordinary. I was calculating - I new how to get where I wanted to go. I knew I was painfully shy - so I joined the debate team. I wanted to be cultured, so I absorbed every piece of information my grandmother taught me about art, music, literature. I wanted to be able to talk about the world - I joined a competitive geography team, studied maps and poured over National Geographic. I wanted to be refined. At 15, I began my 10-year subscription to a news magazine. I read the paper every day.
I launched out as far as my fledgling wings and limited finances would take me - and fled to the sophistication and the urbanity of the East Coast at my first opportunity. I pursued my education like someone possessed. I dated stockbrokers, investment bankers and one hapless pre-med-turned-eternal-student-guitar major, who was the wrong fit from the beginning, but offered a certain-well-roundedness to my otherwise stringent requirements.
I ran the quiet, tree-lined streets of Chevy Chase, Md., and dreamed of living in one of the stately brick homes with a foreign SUV in the driveway and a healthy bank account. A year later, I boarded the train daily, mixing my $10/hour intern self in with the rising power elite of the other suburbanite commuters. I walked proudly into my downtown office every morning and sprinted to catch the 5:07 train every evening. It didn't matter that I left home and arrived home in the dark. I was becoming the adult I wanted to be. And so it went for years.
And then, a funny thing happened; it all came crashing down. In bits and pieces the life I lived - the one I was certain I wanted - first developed fissures along the foundation and then, over the course of several years, began to disinegrate piece by piece.
The last brick tumbled to the ground nearly two months ago, sitting in the dreaded HR office, when the news was handed down that in 5 hours, I would no longer be employed. Baby's pending arrival meant taking Option 2 - a medicore, less-than-fullfilling opportunity at the same company, that now has me temporarily working in Outer Darkness, wearing sneakers to work and improving my Spanish.
With the collapse of the reality I had worked so hard to construct for the past 18 years, I realized that everything I had ever done in my entire life had been to get to the point I was at 30 minutes prior to the News. And in mere seconds, the entire thing dissolved, leaving me to wonder what was left. I had been so focused, so determined, so passionate - I had left little room for anything else.
Himself claims I have no hobbies. I have almost no close friends that I see on any sort of regular basis. I don't like to sit and contemplate. I schedule everything. And, falling short of what I thought I absolutely wanted, but hadn't yet attained, I sunk into "dark and twisty" territory. I had left the only two permanent things in my life - Himself, who was my greatest champion in my sprint to my version of adulthood, even though it was far different than his own and Baby.
I stand now, on the brink of my 30s, at the brink of motherhood and wonder where the next version of "adulthood" will take me. Who will I become? Will I construct something from the rubble of my childhood visions or will Himself and I build a different version? Will my identity become as consumed as 'Baby's Mom' as it was by 'Current Job Title Here?'
I'm closer than ever to returning full-circle to the vision of adulthood I was desparate to flee from as a child. Adulthood has a funny way of being interrupted by reality.
No comments:
Post a Comment