Waking up old

I am very confused, a little lost and am not sure when it happened.  Somewhere I became a grown up and I am not very sure that I like it very much.  In between a missed cab from the valley and putting my screaming turdler to bed tonight, I somehow missed something and came upon the self-actualisation that I am indeed, a grown up.

I’m pretty angry about it to be honest.   There are things I missed out on, certain rites of passage that denote to a human that they are in fact approaching purchasing canned goods once a year to clear library overdue feesstatus in their lives.  I seem to have gone from fat, drunk girl who finds stale Macca’s chips in her pocket to a semi fat girl who wishes she was drunk but is too tired to drive the bottle shop and instead watches a turdler sing open shut them with one eye closed and a cold cup of tea.

I got old, and I got here fast.  I remember being fun.  I remember laughing a lot and I remember having friends who did that too.  Somewhere in the last five years that kind of fun seems to have disappeared and the most action that I see is watching my two snails sit on each other for more than an hour at a time on the glass wall of the fish tank.

I’ve been searching for who to blame for this ridiculous turn of events. It can’t be my fault that I used to be this fun human that laughed all of the time, with an active social life and terrible habits that made my pants expand exponentially. There has to be another reason I’ve woken up today feeling old, adult and like I’ve missed something in the last twenty years.

I blame my broken heart.  Heartbreak has a way of ageing you. It turns hair grey, waistlines round and turns your sharp edges raw and then numb to the outside world.  Hearts can break in all kind of ways and almost anyone can break them. In the last five years, mine has been shattered four times.  It seems a lot, and with each one, there was at least twenty more steps to adulthood.

The first was my dad.   Five, almost six, years ago he died in our hallway at home taking with him a part of me, a part of us, that meant we never quite looked at the world the same way again.  My heart was broken and from that one, it will never quite recover.

The second was a man.  All of the best intentions with none of the actions.  It was a case that followed the old adage that you need to be cruel to be kind.  He should have been cruel in the beginning.  The honesty might have hurt then, but it could in no way compare to the heartbreak that would come later. Fractured, broken, bruised and ragged, my heart was shattered.  That heartbreak left its scars and forever changed the hope, the possibility and the belief that real love will ever exist for me.  Sixty more steps to ageing, old lady spinsterism.

The third was a baby.  I made her all by myself and all of the heart that was broken before was melted back together.  She filled the holes, mended the tears and became the balm to the scar tissue.  And when she calls me mum, it breaks again and again in a completely different way.  With her came a new world where I mattered less.  Where my needs became secondary and her heart was the one that I would do all I could to protect it.  1000 more steps to real grown-upedness.

The fourth was another man.  My pop, who left us yesterday.  He was 92 and somewhere in there I thought he would live forever.  He was all that was left of my childhood and even at 92, it was still in him when he laughed, when he smiled and every time he told me he had ice cream for dinner.  The final forty steps to adult hood.

But where on earth where the real things that signal my welcome to adulthood.  The things that other people get, the people in the movies and on tv who look all beautiful doing lovely things at all the various stages of getting to be a grownup.

A boyfriend meeting my parents at dinner, an engagement party, a job interview, being fired, being promoted, a wedding, a makeover montage … I got none of it.  I got stretchy pants, cardigans, baby vomit, dying family members and unrequited love that paved my way to the adult experience.

I am a grown up.  I have to do grown up things everyday and I have a library card that has overdue fees.  At the end of the year I will take several pieces of non-perishable items and I will drop them off in lieu of paying such library fees.  I will do it in stretchy pants, hanging on to a laughing turdler who knows that through those doors there is lego and a wonderland of books that brings her nothing but awe.

I will continue to have to die my hair to hide the grey, run with the pram to fight with my waistband that prefers stretchy pants and cling to tiny hands that blindly believe I can save the world.

Amidst the broken hearts I did laugh.  I still laugh.  And for me the road to adulthood was saved by those who have taken the time to walk with me for a bit, cheer me on from the side of the road and hold my hand when I had to take a few steps backward.  I have not chosen the most traditional road and sometimes the road has been less than kind but I am luckier than most.

I have friends.  Lots of them and I am unequalled in love and support.  They are present in my life and Abbie’s and make a choice on every occasion that we are worth loving and worth sharing in their own joys, sorrows and journeys.

I have family.  They are strong willed, fearless and love harder than any family I’ve ever met.  We are loud, angry and swallowed by our emotions but we are here, we are present and we hold each other up anyway we know how.

I have job.  Not just a job, a career I love.  And the success of my kids is the only motivation that I need to keep going.  And a side hustle that sees me share the happiest of moments with strangers and makes sure I remember that real love still exists in the world.

I have a baby.  She’s perfect.  She’s stubborn, and funny, and clever, and brave, and joyous and she helps me to be a better adult more than anything else in the world.

I may not have any of the things that I thought I would as an adult, but I do have all of the things I need.  My heart may be broken, but the one thing I have learned about being an adult is that so is everyone elses.  Hearts break.  People break them. But it’s our job to mend them and learn to love the scars that are left behind.  My path may be non-traditional, but it is still paved with love and success – it’s just wearing a different outfit than I thought it would.  And that’s ok, my fashion sense has never been all that traditional either.