Being an Adult-ish

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I slept about 11 hours but I’m still exhausted and considering taking a nap this afternoon. Dad and I are planning to go the pool this evening after he watches the final World Cup match of the day but it just started so that’s a couple of hours from now. I should write, but I’m honestly considering a combination of reading and napping in bed until he’s ready to head to the pool. I know napping could make it more difficult for me to sleep tonight and my mom’s been begging me to go with her to fellowship in the morning. I don’t know. I don’t want to go, but it’s not like I would be home all day tomorrow anyway since we’re going to my sister’s for Father’s Day dinner in the afternoon.

I’m looking forward to going over there and seeing my niece. She and her dad went to Puerto Rico to visit some of his extended family a couple of weeks ago and I’d love to hear about the trip. They sent us a few pictures while they were there, but I’d love to hear her talk about it a little. She’s got a couple more months of summer I think before she’ll be headed back to school for her senior year in the fall. It’s crazy how quickly she’s grown up.

It’s weird to me that I’m so much older than I feel like. I mean that in a number of ways I suppose. There are older adults who call me a youngin’ and make all kinds of jokes about “millennial kids these days” even though millennials are all adults now, at least chronologically. At the same time, I’m twice the age of the kids who are getting their licences about this year. I look at people my age and while the majority of my friends are childless and almost as many are unmarried, the vast majority of people out there in the world who are my age are married or have kids or both. I still feel like I’m far too young to be responsible for a child, but truthfully it’s not about my actual, chronological age at all. I’m just not interested in children and I’m struggling to be responsible and mature enough to take care of myself, never mind another human being.

I’m watching myself change in some ways though and it’s really kind of fascinating. I used to never be someone to make a fuss about anything or to push back against people who are telling me what the rules are, but dad and I went to the pool last week and the lifeguard was saying that we had to have a working pass to come into the pool and dad was looking sad and dejected and saying he would check with the person who programs the passes during the coming week. I saw his face and I just… kind of snapped. I pushed back. Got insistent that we had our IDs that she could check against their records and that I’d been in the pool literally the weekend before. After that, she let us in. I know that sounds minor but in years previous I would’ve been upset, but I wouldn’t have pushed it. I’m still not in love with confronting people, but I’m getting better at it little by little. We had our teen kick off and there were kids coming over and Hayley kept saying you had to be a teen to participate otherwise they needed to go to the other event. The kids just standing there ignoring her so finally I looked at each of them and asked how old they were. At that point, they finally relented. They couldn’t look me in the eye and tell me they were at least 12. One kid said he was ten kind of like, “but I’m almost twelve,” and I said, “so you’ll be joining us in a couple of years.”

That probably doesn’t seem like a lot, but it is for me. And it’s so funny because I realize that I would’ve preferred to let Hayley or Jonathan handle it, but Jonathan wasn’t there and Hayley was looking vulnerable and frustrated and she just looked at me with this exasperated expression and it clicked for me. Apparently, I’m unlikely to do it for myself, but when someone I care about is floundering I suddenly feel the need and have the bravery to intervene.

I hope that I can do this more. That I can stick up for myself, my friends, and the rules that I need to more often. I want to be brave. I want to be an adult. Maybe in time I will be.