Today, I believe this may be the best solution (not really, kind of).
Being a parent is hard. Being a grown up is hard. Having to cook 300 days a year is hard (I'm allowing for a lot of take-out/restaurant meals). Cleaning the house is hard (because it just keeps getting dirty). Cleaning windows is hard. Home maintenance is hard. Working is hard.
I want to be that kid that spends hours in the basement playing "Office" with my siblings. I want to be the kid who plays endlessly in the dirt surrounding our acreage with my brother's Tonka trucks and the homemade trucks my Grandpa made us. I want to play Barbies with my sister. I want to write stories. I want to come home from school and have my Mom smiling with homemade cookies for a snack the yummy smell of dinner cooking in the oven.
I'll even weed the garden and spend 3/4 of the summer shelling peas. Oh, how we spent our summers shelling peas (and taking the ends of green beans and picking raspberries and digging carrots and dusting the cauliflower and broccoli with toxins to kill bugs). Heck, I'll even take my elderly Grandmother shopping every single Saturday (without complaint) and I promise I won't die of embarrassment when she farts in every isle.
I want fresh sheets on my beds, clean laundry in my drawers and a hug from my Mom telling me tomorrow would be a better day. My life wasn't a Normal Rockwell painting but there are days now where I reflect on my childhood with longing and desire. I was always in such a hurry to grow up that now that I have, I think young me was a total moron. Being a grown up is damn hard and it isn't nearly as much fun as I expected it to be.
Sure, I have a job (sort of) and it pays well and I can buy "things" I want but I can't buy everything I want because, you know, I have to eat (and feed my own little TroubleMaker) and make house payments and pay bills and save for TroubleMaker's university education. I can't bunk off my responsibilities and because I'm not independently wealthy, I've actually travelled less as an adult then I did as a teenager.
Then one has to factor in the whole "getting old" stuff. How things hurt now that didn't before and how the ground keeps getting further and further away from me (and it's not because I'm growing taller). My neck and back are aching and my sight and hearing's fading for crying out loud - this grown up thing is stupid.
Seriously, it's not really that bad but I'm certainly willing to go to my Mom's for a few days and just lay on her couch and let her
I did not like being a kid. At all. Mostly because I resented going to school, and super really totally resented poeple telling me to "think of school as a job." Yeah I job that the state forced me to have that paid me nothing and in no way furthered my independence or confidence.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think being an adult rocks. No more gym class for one thing.