Growing Pains Blues

When I was a kid, a friend asked me, "If you can stay one age for the rest of your life, how old would you be?" We called it the magic age. Mine was 23. When I was 23, I thought to myself, "I'll worry about stuff later." I thought that when the magic was over, I'd miraculously transform into a productive member of society who reads the paper and drinks coffee every morning (thus leaving a trail of blood in my wake). My magic age has now zoomed off into the horizon and despite being one year (going on two) past 23, nothing much has changed. I still have my caution-to-the-wind attitude towards everything, dancing through the days like I still have a million tomorrows tucked neatly under my belt.

I've always thought that the people I grew up with shared the same sentiments as me, that we'll keep drinking until dawn then spend all Saturday morning watching cartoons and video clips. But recently I've noticed that things are starting to change. All around me, friends have settled into professional jobs (IT consultants, nurses, financial strategists and the like), buying properties, building investment portfolios and, after loosening their ties or swapping Manolo's for slippers at the end of a long day, settling down into the arms of that special someone. You know, stuff grown-ups do.

Inevitably, when such a gaping discrepancy so rudely injects itself between you and the people around you, you can't help but start wondering about the direction your life is taking. You see, I don't understand what it means to be grown-up. I know that people graduate, find a job, find a partner and so forth. But I wonder, how does a person go through these steps and not realise that their life is slipping away? As the days pass, is there a shift in mental state whereby you migrate slowly along the spectrum from kid to adult? It seems like everyone has this ingenious device that detects the amount of time passed since birth and adjusts one's state of mind accordingly so that the one behaves in a manner commensurate with one's age bracket.

If that's the case, I don't think I was born with that device. I've always been resistant to growing up. I had to be dragged kicking and screaming into VicRoads to get my Ls (at 18). Graduation was probably the most traumatic day of my life. And even though it's high time I get myself into a 'proper' job, the thought of wearing a shirt and tie to work every day is one of my worst nightmares. So it seems that any time I see a flag marking a milestone approaching, I lose all control and let out this primal howl, desperately trying to claw my way back to whence I came. Don't get me wrong, I do want all of those grown-up things. After all, I want to have secure future with a good job, a nice house and a special someone to call my own and all that, just like everyone else. But my viscera seems to fight tooth and nail against achieving anything that resembles a hallmark of moving into the adult world. And so I'm left stranded in this state of (to modify a quote from the great philosopher Spears) Not-A-Boy-Not-Yet-A-Man.

Am I the only one that finds growing up so difficult?