Growing Up Is Weird
Yesterday I was on the phone with Christy, and she told me that she thinks she found the apartment her and her boyfriend are going to move into next year.
Of course, my immediate response was “Well, is there another room for Tristan to stay in when I fly out to visit?” She knows me so well because obviously she said yes.
Even though I was excited for her, we brushed over the topic relatively quickly. It wasn’t until today while I was driving, that I realized just how insane that actually is.
Christy, who I’ve known since I was 5, the girl who I’ve had almost 20 years of friendship with, who I danced with at the father daughter dance in the first grade, who stayed home sick with me on the last day of third grade because we both had the stomach flu, the maid of honor in my wedding, my absolute BEST FRIEND, is moving in with a BOY!
Shock doesn’t even begin to cover it when I finally absorbed the information. You go through a whole lifetime with a person, and it’s crazy to me that you can visibly see someone exiting one phase of their life, and entering another. In my head, we’re still trying to teach my brother how to swim in the shallow end of her pool when we were 12.
It struck me then, that the next important moments the two of us will individually have is when she gets engaged, and I get pregnant. And those are things we’ve more or less dreamt about for our entire lives.
Your twenties are actually insane. Every day on Instagram, I see people posting about getting hired at their dream job or buying a house. I have friends who just decided to live casually in Europe. I have friends who are still just figuring everything out.
My little brother isn’t little anymore. I can see the way my parents have aged, and I can see how everything is their first time too. I’ve seen and had friendships begin and end for a number of different reasons. I know people who have gone through some really tough things.
It all inevitably leads me back to the fact that life is just speeding by faster and faster as the years go on. And whenever I think of that, the only braincell in my brain is the scene from High School Musical 3 when Gabriella tells Troy in the treehouse that she wants everything to slow down.
I too, want everything to slow down because I want to be able to take it all in. It’s like I’m grabbing sand, but my hands are sifters, and I can’t quite hold onto the moments that are going by.
There’s a poem by Sarah Kay called Point B that I read in high school, and I loved it so much that I printed it for my binder cover back then. But there’s a line in it that goes:
“You will put the “wind” in win some lose some, you will put the “star” in starting over and over, and no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life.”
And life really is funny. Life really is beautiful. Life is crazy and heartbreaking and exciting and gut-wrenching and disappointing and really, really rewarding.
You do win some. You do lose some. You do break up with your high school boyfriend, start over, and then move in with the boy you couldn’t have even imagined loving more than the first. (And then your first boyfriend will get a tattoo of a hummingbird on his hand and you’ll laugh about it with your best friend).
I don’t want to forget all the small wins… or even the defeats for that matter. Everything is a lesson. Everything pushes us towards exactly where we’re supposed to be. It’s so suckishly magical that it breaks my heart and stitches it back together a million times in a week.
I suppose coming to terms with the idea of growing up is a whole different category of whiplash that I never saw coming. However, I’m learning to enjoy it.
You should too.
P.S. Christy, I call dibs on the left side of the bed when I come visit you in your big girl apartment that you share with your boyfriend who you couldn’t possibly love more than me.