Dear Camille No. 3: On Exiting Teenagerhood
I'm 20! Death to Adulthood! Long live the adolescent! Blargh!
I’m almost 2 months late to this reflection, but huge congrats to me on beating teen pregnancy! I can no longer feasibly blame any of my problems on teen angst. I am 20, so now all my problems are because of inflation, the stock market, and these damn kids and their phones.
I am not a consistent birthday crier, but I cried when I turned 10 and 12 and 14 and 16 and when I turned 18, so naturally, I assumed the death of my teenage years would bring on a slew of complex emotions (also, apparently I cry on every second birthday, so 20 is the next logical step). Instead, I…felt nothing (cue my musical theater competition song from middle school: “Nothing” from A Chorus Line).
I am nostalgic to a fault. When my parents moved out of my childhood home, I spent almost a full week going through all my stuff and deciding what got to go into the one box I was allotted for the next house, looking through old photos and journal entries and art projects and English papers. It was a tearful time. Growing up, every single time a session of summer camp ended I would cry and cry and cry, sad to separate from the people I’d grown so close with over just 2 weeks.
When I graduated from fourth grade, I promised myself that even though time would pass and I would get older, I’d always feel like a fourth grader in my heart. But, even as this 14th grade school year ends 10 years later and I’ve come back to Texas without saying goodbye to a lot of my most beloved Michiganders, I feel like I’ve become less sentimental. I cry less during goodbyes, I write less wistful poetry about the passing of a school year. Has age hardened me? Are my antidepressants working too well? Am I simply just…growing out of it? I’ve worn my heart on my sleeve for so long that I’m beginning to wonder if one day, while taking the bus to class, the pin came a little loose and my heart fell off somewhere in the streets of Ann Arbor.
I feel like adulthood (whatever that can mean while I’m still a student, still financially dependent on my parents, and still watch cars 2 at least once a year) has crept up on me slowly. Slowly but surely, I have an easier time letting people and places and eras go. I’ve learned to like nonfiction books and tea and wooden spoons and vintage chairs, and what’s happened to me? I wouldn’t say I’m serious by any means (helloooo camp counselor, friendship bracelets, improv comedy, sparkly pen collection), but I realized last week when I got mad at the men in my life for being childish and dumb and also not replacing the toilet paper roll on the holder when it’s done (just putting it on the counter like maniacs) that I’m growing up. I care about the keeping of a home and I have a retirement account and I want to get a cat (don’t worry, dad. I won’t). I have a bum hip (I am not kidding), heartburn, and a stress headache. I think I’m getting wrinkles on my forehead. None of this, of course, is bad, but my identity has for so long been tied up in youth, in being free from responsibility and learning to lose control and play, that I think now that I’m expected to exercise some measure of control and responsibility, It’s scary and different and I don’t like it.
I’ve talked a lot about living in an “in between” space and being comfortable not being all the way one thing or the other. To me, adolescence was that in-between space. I liked being not quite a kid but definitely not an adult. It was so significant for me to explore myself and the person I wanted to be in a low-stakes environment where everyone was also doing the same thing. I’ve now entered the point of college where instead of everyone being confused and scared and in it together like freshman year, we’re frantically elbowing each other out of the way to get an internship, talking about our futures and getting jobs as investment bankers. I really hate it, not least because I feel like I’m lost in a way that nobody else is. Maybe that feeling of lostness is indicative that I’m not really grown up at all yet, though I suspect that “real” adults feel lost all the time.
Either way, I’m trying to be less of a grown-up. I think that I need to reconnect with my inner child, or whatever it is they say. I’m working at the ropes course again this summer so playing on a big playground will be good for me. I’m also going to keep playing in my regular, non summer-camp life. Improv keeps me from thinking too hard, from being too grounded. You keep me from being too grounded. I’m excited to see you, Camille, now that I’m home. Let’s play together.
adulthood is sneaky like that. its happening, bit by bit. I like who i am now. I like how things are. Please, peter, I don't wanna grow up.