what it means to be 22

I always thought that by this age I'd have my life more figured out.  I thought that once you reached 18, you were automatically an adult despite the circumstances.  How very wrong I was.  Today, now, at this age, I'm still fighting for entitlement, independence, adulthood.  Slowly, I see it trickling into my life, but no where as fast as I expected it would.  I never thought that I would be so lost at 22.  Just last year my life was more figured out than it is now.  I had a plan, and I thought I would be sticking to it.  And then, it's as if my life was turned upside down, and my plans went down the rabbit hole, and I became Alice, tumbling down attempting to catch them before everything hit the bottom.  Before I hit the bottom.  Now, I'm sort of hoping that I do hit the bottom, so I can continue on to have an adventure in Wonderland, meet the Queen of Hearts, paint some roses red, then reenter reality with a newfound sense of what I want in my life.

How does it feel to be 22?  More or less the same as feeling 20, or 21.  But now, there's that imminent sense of "holy crap, I just seem to be growing older.  I really need to figure this shit out."  You know that feeling?  The feeling that it's never going to be last year, I'm never going to be 21 again.  In fact, the numbers are just going to go up up up, and the next thing I know I'm going to be turning 42, and then what?! And then what?  Theres an added pressure with growing older.  The questions are going to start popping up more and more, "What are your plans?  When are you going to settle down?  Find that husband?  Have those kids?" And I'm going to have to politely smile and say, "I guess we'll see," while secretly pulling an Avada Kedavra curse on them in my head.  Secretly.

But you know what, f this.  Screw all the negative things I keep writing on this blog.  You know what?  This isn't me.  I'm not supposed to be this negative yucky mean girl who's isolated herself from all the humans in her life.  I'm not supposed to be this nervous wreck who constantly worries, who constantly torments herself with thoughts of tomorrow.  I was never like this before, and quite frankly, I despise that I am like this now.

So.  What does it mean to be 22?  Well, for starters I'm going to fix everything that I f-ed up as 21.  I'm going to pick up the pieces of my life and really go for the things that I want.  So it takes a little bit to discover what those things are, but I have all year, right?  And hopefully, next year this time, I'll be typing a blog like this from the comfort of my home in the New Jersey suburbs with my husband Ralph, and a 2 month old on my shoulder.

Haha.  Just kidding.  Yeah right, like that's ever going to happen.