This side of paradise

Oh god. It's happened. When I wasn't looking, somehow, I've "come of age". And it's saddening me, because I've already consumed a large share of first times. First love, first intoxication, first heartbreak, first depression, first trip to Europe. First steps out of my parents' house, first taste of independance. And I'm a bit scared I'll never feel with such intensity and innocence again. Scared I'll never give with as much, and scared my happiness will never again be incumbent on so little. I've exited a poetic and sometimes cruel part of my life, and as with all goodbyes, part of me wants to cling on to its pantleg and beg it to stay as it walks out the door.

I feel like when I started this blog, and its predecessor, Staygoldoutsider, I was still entrenched in the process. I was going through it and making the spectacle available for public consumption. But it's been harder and harder to write. And not because I've not had the urge and need, but because the wellspring of post-teen identity crises is drying up! Too many realizations are being made! Too many issues of the Economist are being read! Too much identifying is occuring with Oprah!

The post-coming of age symptoms are too great to ignore. Wistfulness, accompanied by great, heaving sighs, rubbing of the forehead. Searching looks in the mirror. Almost compulsive gazing out of windows. Gentle crushes on 19 year old actors because they remind me of my first love. A nasty tumble into near-destructive nostalgia, whereby I punish myself with memories of love, sex, travels, angsts, friends and pivotal moments, all viewed through the sentimental lens of adulthood, all neutered of any of the actual torment they inspired.

The fact is, I am no longer a teenager. I am old enough that, had I been sluttier or more careless, I could now be a parent of a teenager. I think that is the earmark of when you can no longer claim allegience to the sufferings of youth.

I'm not saying I'm old. But I am showing signs of a different age box. They come random and fast. The delineation between youth and maturity are just that much clearer to me. It's funny, I remember near-panic attacks during my grunge days, worrying I'd one day wake up and be overtaken by love for country music and take up line-dancing against the iron will of my struggle for coolness. I don't think I'll be honkey-tonking any time soon, but the thing is, I listen to country music now. Not the new stuff but the old greats, like Ray Price and Woody Guthrie and Hank and Patsy and anyone who makes the hairs on my arms stand up. Good music is good music. "Who's your favourite band?" is no longer an applicable question, because the answer no longer defines you.

The other day I was walking my dog, and I had an out-of-body experience, whereby I imagined myself doing this exact thing, walking this dog down this street, wearing this dress. Only it was four or five years later, and I had a husband and kids. "These are my children, Olive and Buck." I mentally introduced my children to an imaginary aquaintance. I've always figured I'd have children, I know I want them. But I've never envisaged them, never given them names and personalities, never associated personal pride with procreation. They are a real-er possibility now. Something I want not just with my mind but with my being.

The biggest change in me has been the realization that I am farther away from teenagehood than from my thirties. I notice things, like wrinkles, which I'm determined to not care about too much, or lower energy. I frequently use the sentence starter "now that I'm getting older...". I'm distressed greatly by the teenagers in my neighbourhood, they seem more rough-and-tumble, less innocent, more wise-ass than I remember teens being. And I am going to be confronted by the fact that I will be a fair decade older than some of my classmates when I enter school in a couple of weeks. And it matters to me. Not that I can elude the capture and assignment of my self to a demographic, but it matters that I adopt a different sense of gravity. That I begin to take my life seriously, because I am no longer allowed the delicious freedom of responsibility and surprise at consequences to stupidity that comes with youth.

It's a melancholy and exciting time, this ripening process. But one thing that remains is the uncertainty of life. That is something shared by young and old, and it's the thing that will keep us caring about one another, because what happens to you can happen to me, and the older you get, the less invinceable you become. We're sorely mistaken in being such a youth obsessed culture, because I honestly don't think we would be able to handle the wonderfulness of a teenage life lived with the wisdom of our retrospect. Our youth would be too intense, too absolute, too short, and our beauty, the nubile bodies and fresh faces, would be too sorely missed. There has to be something to look forward to in crossing over to adulthood

And so I can gently mourn the firsts I've already passed through. Because there are so many more to come. Like my first paycheck from a "real" job, the first article I get published in a newspaper or magazine I respect. The first time I buy a major appliance. The first time I fall in love with a man in an adult way. The first passing of a beloved. And the first birth of one.

The grass, it now seems, is greener on this side.