I was
hanging out with a friend and came to the
astonishing (to me)
discovery that everything i've been doing (for the past few years) falls into the
subset of
experience named
My Adult Life. So i could say "I have effectively been in this
relationship all my adult life" or "never,
in all my adult life, have i
dyed my hair
purple."
I don't know when or how it happened. Suddenly my mother doesn't argue with me any more. I want to do things for myself.
I kind of wish there had been a border or boundary to pass over; maybe i would have felt it more if i had graduated college. As it is, sometimes people take me for 3/4 of my age occasionally. And sometimes it's easier that way. We just don't have the same kind of life rituals as other societies: my anth professor made an argument that college is a liminal period, when i was considering leaving. If there were a(n observable) transformation somewhere between halcyon childhood and My Adult Life, what difference might it have made? Might i feel more entitled to people's respect, and fuller in my sense of belonging to something?
I guess that's what i really want, maybe, is to belong to something. I claim adulthood, even though i scorned the category before, and it is cold to me. Funny, huh?