Growin’ Up
By Marissa A Ross
one day you wake up & you realize you’re growing up. it’s june when it was just january. your parents always told you time would just fly. the urgency to accomplish things sets in. you’re only twenty one but time seems to be slipping away. hell, you’re ALREADY twenty one & A HALF ! time to handle business. you get busy with business. you get enveloped in goals. suddenly, you realize seventy five percent of the people you know don’t give a fuck. they don’t give a fuck about you. they don’t give a fuck about themselves. but they’re fun. you go & you drink & you listen to their one liners & shit taking & you’ll laugh. it’s always the same though. they get trashed & go to their mediocre jobs they’re perfectly happy with in the morning & then do it all over again. & they’re fun. but they don’t challenge you. they don’t inspire you. hell, they don’t know your last name. & one day you realize you don’t care who’s fucking who. because all those people that do care are going to be here ten years from now in this town, still fucking the same people, still content with their humdrum jobs, still hanging out at the same old bars. & yeah, they’re fun. but thats the extent of it. & the guys you hang out with, they’re fun too. but they don’t care about you. they act like they do but when you watch closely you know they don’t. & yet you still pick up their calls. you still let them buy you drinks & you still get drunk & you laugh & you sleep over & you feel terrible about it the next day but you’ll do it again. because it’s fun. & you’re twenty one, you just want to have fun. & one day you realize you deserve a lot more than that. if you’re going to spend time with someone why not make it someone who at least captivates you. who you can hold a conversation with soberly about things that actually matter (or don’t matter at all). you’re already twenty one & a half why waste time at these bars with these guys with all these lines… you’re so pretty. you’re so unique. you’re so different. & one day you realize yes, you are all those things & that’s why bars are terrible & why dating is for the birds. & when you’re not figuring out your friends aren’t your friends or that you’re not “dating” you’re just “sleeping with” that guy, you’re watching your family grow up & apart. your parents divorce & your sister can drive & everyone’s going a thousand different directions. you can’t remember the last time your family sat around your dining room table, even though you used to every night. the idea of family has dissipated. now you’re just people, living & sleeping in the same home. sometimes. sometimes you go to bed in a big house by yourself & you wake up still alone, with a for sale sign in the front yard. You don’t know where you’re going. but you realize you never really do.
one day you’ll find yourself surrounded by only people that make you feel full. the kind of people you want to write novels about. one day you’ll find yourself actually dating & actually enjoying it & actually feeling good about it. one day you’ll accept that families just grow apart, because you have to live your life. in which case, make every day productive & make every relationship, in any form, fulfilling. because you’re already twenty one & a half & there is no time to waste.
