I'm An Adult, So...

I'm an adult, so...

I want you to fill in the blank. So many things can go there depending on your place in life.
Many of the young people I know who are teetering on the cusp of adulthood would finish with something to the effect of "I can do what I like." For other people it's things like "I shouldn't have to do that." or "it's my responsibility.".

For me? For me it's coming down to "I should be able to deal with this." or something to that effect.
I feel like I have no right to talk about these kinds of things because I only recently have become an adult (if I really am one. I have severe doubts sometimes). I have no children, I live with my parents, I have a job and an education and comparatively few things to think about that should keep me awake at night, staring into the darkness and wondering what on earth I'm going to do.

But—I feel like life is one giant game of dodgeball, and there's really not a lot of space between missiles, never mind the fact that there's usually at least seven or eight coming at you at once.

Work, school, callings, money, responsibility—

grief, confusion, worry, JOY—hunger, weakness—guilt, guilt guilt—gratitude, inadequacy, hope.

How many of these emotions did I feel in their infant stage in my childhood? I didn't know that growing up would cause them to flower so terribly.

So many things happen. So many things change and this Margaret weeps for things that will never be the same, things that seem like they have lost too many pieces to ever be whole again. We are so close to the Divine in moments of pure joy and grief and hope. I want to savour them, I want to grasp them in my fingers until I understand their shape and know their parts. But instead I set them aside to be considered later because I have to go to work or because my body realizes it's been 20 hours since I last slept. Or because the dishes need to be done or the dog needs out or my room is finally so ugly I cannot bear to walk into it.

Sometimes I set them aside because they are too blinding, too poignant and piquant. It is too much work to be the child of a God so perfect, so powerful, so loving in a life that leaves no time for stillness. I think I create my own chaos. I am not a peaceful person.

Where there is nothing to gnaw and worry, I will chew on myself—like an animal in a trap—until I have something ragged at which to and tear and over which to weep. Isn't there enough sorrow in the world without making my own? At least I can deal with my own sorrow. I can't fix India. I can't give parents back to orphaned children or restore the miscarried child of a grieving woman. All I can do is vacuum and try to be kind and do my best not to wound the people who love me best.

I'm an adult, so I should be able to deal with this.

Skipping Record

I seem to be a little stuck.

My JET (Japan English Teaching) application is 

going in this week, and I don't even know what to hope.  

Part of me really hopes that I will get in and part of me really REALLY hopes that the book mom and I are finishing up will make both of us filthy rich (a la Harry Potter).  Of course, thus are the dreams of any aspiring author.

I guess this is just one of those times where I am leaping hurdle after hurdle...and still feel as though I were standing in the same place.  The things that I am working on seem so long term that getting them done degree by degree carries with it no feeling of accomplishment.  The book, my application to JET (the results of which I likely will not receive until mid january or later—and that's just whether or not I qualify for an interview), my independent study course, my various and sundry drawing and writing projects, cleaning out my stuff and getting a storage unit and on and on, ad nauseam.  

I feel like I'm waiting for something that never is going to happen.  At least, if it DOES happen, I will be so worn down by waiting that the thing itself will have lost its luster.  

As Hugh Beringar of the Brother Cadfael books said:  "If a man finds at eighty what he was searching for at twenty, he might prove a shade ungrateful."  and Cadfael replies with something like this: "He may have found by eighty that the thing he wanted wasn't worth the having after-all."

There's a lot of wisdom in that, but I'm no sure I'm old enou

gh to really appreciate it yet.

I think one of the reasons why I have not "settled down," in every sense of that word, is that I am really afraid of being bored.  I don't want to wake

 up one morning and look at the life I have made for myself and realize in a panic that I feel stagnant—trapped and unmoving with my 

feet solidly mired.  Of course, if I love whatever it is I am doing, that's not going to happen.  At least, if it DOES happen I'll be able to work through it log

ically.

I guess I just have yet to find anything—or anyone— that I am willing to commit all my considerable energies to.

This post was not going to be about this.  I WAS going to write about how dog sitting my aunt's dogs is like being a single mother with a two year old and a seven year old.  It was going to be witty, funny, dry and philosophical.  At least I got the last

 one—maybe.

Celune briach Cyncad: scholar, mage and directionally challenged.  My World of Warcraft alter-ego.  It's in the middle of being coloured, but I lack the motivation to finish it at the moment...