an emotional damselle

“Sometimes late when things are real.And people share the gift of gab between themselves Some are quick to take the bait And catch the perfect prize that waits among the shelves” - Tin Man by America

Hello Adulthood, you dont look so bad after all.

There comes a point in our lives when suddenly maturity comes and bites you like a mosquito. When you wake up one day and you feel that youre no longer attached to your teddy bear collection ,you’re no longer screaming like an excited naivette whenever your favourite show is on and your favourite therapeutic activity is all about organising your universe called the bedroom whilst listening to The Doors, Edith Piaf and Linda Ronstadt. You scoff at your old music list and decided to remove the ones that you find annoying nowadays.

You think about your future; your career, real estate properties that you can potentially own and the screws and bolts of superannuation, savings and investments. You start to appreciate the art of food shopping and looking for cheap cleaning products at your local asian shop. You pick up a recipe book and have cordial conversations with your darling mum at the kitchen about cooking, what is the best time to defrost frozen vegetables and how to marinate pork. You make your bed every morning now and do your own laundry. In short you do not mind doing housework- as long as it is reasonable.

You take up the habit of making daily, weekly and monthly planners and fill your business card holder with any business cards that you have shoved inside your wallet for years. You read the newspaper and read google news first thing in the morning. Your access to facebook have slightly decreased and you no longer give a rat’s ass if you dont update your status for days.

As for your social life, you feel confident that you do not need to get trashed in some club and pretend youre a ditzy harlot for the night in order to gain social acceptance. You are slowly beginning to realise your limits, your strength and weaknesses without wallowing into self pity or false bravado.You realise that fashion and makeup can be a tool for enhancing self confidence, not as a way to hide blemishes or pretending to be someone you’re not.

You are starting to learn how to differentiate between an aquaintance, colleague and a casual friend. Yet at the same time you protect and communicate often to  your core social circle composing of family ,close friends and significant other because they keep you grounded and steady. You and your significant other have moved on from highly passionate yet unstable adolescent romantic inklings to deep companionship; stolen kisses and flirty conversations over tete a tete, compromises and improving conflict resolution skills  despite busy life schedules.

You learned through the hard way that you should never go to bed angry, to personally attack someone and bring out old issues during an argument ,organise dates, respect each other’s individual schedules and to call each other everyday to remind the love that you share. You are learning to solve the issue straight away and to encourage each other’s ambitious dreams.

You understand your parent’s rant that couples should work hard tooth and nail towards the future whilst keeping their shared faith, values and dreams intact. Most of all, you start to notice that the  love you have is taking its first steps to evolve into a pragmatic relational realism, where both of  you support each other’s back and rigorously plan to stick with one another despite life’s storms ,personality differences and living arrangements. 

You sleep before 2am and wake up early- you are starting to realise that old adage warning of sleep debt. You excercise and decide to eat healthy home made foods over some cheap takeaway ones. You are actively looking for jobs whilst taking up a hobby or joining a social cause in your local community.

You appreciate the ingenuity of dishwashers, ALDI, GO-Lo, green tea,vaccum bags and TV shows such as Better Homes and Gardens and DIY projects. You read and go out more often than before. But you spend lesser time on sedentary activities that you used to do such as watching  television and youtube.

You are realising that traits such as self control, confidence with your own skin, discipline, frugality, witty humour, conscientiousness, trustworthines, respect, sincere humility, passion and striking up good conversations - are important than ethnicity, class, the brand of clothes you wear, popularity, your job and the size of your house.

……………………………………………………….

I think Im growing up. Maybe.

So I will finally say my goodbye teenage skin for good and greet the breeze coming from the warm embers of adulthood. I must say, it is not as daunting and scary as I had assumed it would be. It did not come surprisingly like a thief in the night to put some “renaissance period” for the show to wake me up. Rather, I didn’t understand until now that I was actually shedding my skins in every painful and glorious experiences I had since I hit 13.