My Conundrum of Being Grown-up
For as long as I can remember I’ve been a binge eater, drinker, TV watcher and serial dieter. I’ve mastered the art of procrastination as well as perfected my ability to wrap everything up at the zero hour. After almost 10 years of effort, I swear I will never be confident enough to attend a social gathering where I don’t know anyone. Given that I’m going to be twenty seven next month, all of this makes me wonder, will I ever get my shit together?
When you’re a kid, you have this vision of what you’ll turn out like as a grown-up. Mine was something similar to the character that Jodie Foster played on Contact. I would be working on something worthwhile; and I would be as put together as she was. (Okay, I was going through the quintessential "space syndrome" phase that almost all kids go through)
Well that hasn’t happened yet. In fact, most of the time I feel incredibly out of balance. Despite my ongoing attempts to achieve a more harmonious existence, everything remains an extreme with me. Sometimes for weeks, I’ll just spend time attached to my kindle not worrying about anything outside the boundaries of my room. Then once I can’t live with myself any longer, I spend the next month planning my new diet and jogging till I drop off. If I’m not severely restricting my caloric intake, I’m stuffing my face full of junk as a reward for eating healthy the week before.
I’m not even sure I’m all that different than I was in high school. I still watch TV like a teenager, lying on bed instead of my old my couch with my legs sprawled everywhere. Do grown-ups do that? I’ve never seen my parents do that, but then they never did that in the first place.
I keep thinking that eventually something is going to click and I’m just going to be a normal person like I see walking around on the street. Maybe one day I’ll do yoga and be at peace without my mind forever racing with anxiety about what I need to do next and then riddled with guilt when I don’t do it. Maybe I’ll be one of those people you hear about who lost weight not because they went on a diet, but because they made a “lifestyle” change.I know those people and I hate them.
Even now when I picture myself in my fifties I’m thin and I must be financially stable because I’m never working. I’m almost always on a beach somewhere, smiling tranquilly after sipping some margaritas or something. When I ponder the future me, everything always seems to be in order but then I have to ask myself, when exactly is all of this going to pan out? Because this is it. This is my grown-up life. It’s happening now, yet I’m still all over the place.
Perhaps I would be better served coming to terms with the idea that growing up, in the way we thought of it when we were kids, never really happens. That there is no such thing as a “normal” grown-up walking around on the street. That our perception of all grown-ups to be completely happy and well-adjusted when we were children has led to the unrealistic expectation that we would someday turn into one.
In that case, should I stop trying to so hard to change the things that I don’t like about myself and accept me for who I am? Because honestly, I’m kind of tired of trying to be better all the time. Instead, maybe I should just roll with the kind of crazy I am and acknowledge that we all have our issues, these are mine, so why bother getting worked up over them?
But if I do that, do I then lose the chance that I may one day turn into that calm, happy woman who’s retired with a house on the beach because I’m no longer trying to improve myself? I mean isn’t being unsatisfied what ultimately makes us strive for better things?
Either way, I’m sure I’ll stress the issue to death because that’s who I am, the over-analyzer.
8track playlist that caused the rant: aptly called between the shadow and the soul
P.S. I am down with viral fever and my drug addled brain is in hyper-drive; hence the rant.
P.P.S I don't know why I have this pathological need to confess the reasons for rambling on. I guess, I am trying to distance myself from these crazy rants by stating root-causes for the said rant.
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When you’re a kid, you have this vision of what you’ll turn out like as a grown-up. Mine was something similar to the character that Jodie Foster played on Contact. I would be working on something worthwhile; and I would be as put together as she was. (Okay, I was going through the quintessential "space syndrome" phase that almost all kids go through)
Well that hasn’t happened yet. In fact, most of the time I feel incredibly out of balance. Despite my ongoing attempts to achieve a more harmonious existence, everything remains an extreme with me. Sometimes for weeks, I’ll just spend time attached to my kindle not worrying about anything outside the boundaries of my room. Then once I can’t live with myself any longer, I spend the next month planning my new diet and jogging till I drop off. If I’m not severely restricting my caloric intake, I’m stuffing my face full of junk as a reward for eating healthy the week before.
I’m not even sure I’m all that different than I was in high school. I still watch TV like a teenager, lying on bed instead of my old my couch with my legs sprawled everywhere. Do grown-ups do that? I’ve never seen my parents do that, but then they never did that in the first place.
I keep thinking that eventually something is going to click and I’m just going to be a normal person like I see walking around on the street. Maybe one day I’ll do yoga and be at peace without my mind forever racing with anxiety about what I need to do next and then riddled with guilt when I don’t do it. Maybe I’ll be one of those people you hear about who lost weight not because they went on a diet, but because they made a “lifestyle” change.I know those people and I hate them.
Even now when I picture myself in my fifties I’m thin and I must be financially stable because I’m never working. I’m almost always on a beach somewhere, smiling tranquilly after sipping some margaritas or something. When I ponder the future me, everything always seems to be in order but then I have to ask myself, when exactly is all of this going to pan out? Because this is it. This is my grown-up life. It’s happening now, yet I’m still all over the place.
Perhaps I would be better served coming to terms with the idea that growing up, in the way we thought of it when we were kids, never really happens. That there is no such thing as a “normal” grown-up walking around on the street. That our perception of all grown-ups to be completely happy and well-adjusted when we were children has led to the unrealistic expectation that we would someday turn into one.
In that case, should I stop trying to so hard to change the things that I don’t like about myself and accept me for who I am? Because honestly, I’m kind of tired of trying to be better all the time. Instead, maybe I should just roll with the kind of crazy I am and acknowledge that we all have our issues, these are mine, so why bother getting worked up over them?
But if I do that, do I then lose the chance that I may one day turn into that calm, happy woman who’s retired with a house on the beach because I’m no longer trying to improve myself? I mean isn’t being unsatisfied what ultimately makes us strive for better things?
Either way, I’m sure I’ll stress the issue to death because that’s who I am, the over-analyzer.
8track playlist that caused the rant: aptly called between the shadow and the soul
P.S. I am down with viral fever and my drug addled brain is in hyper-drive; hence the rant.
P.P.S I don't know why I have this pathological need to confess the reasons for rambling on. I guess, I am trying to distance myself from these crazy rants by stating root-causes for the said rant.
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