Regardless of the looks that I get when I pass kids skating at the park who are half my age, or the confused glances from the cashier at the grocery store when I hand her my ID for a six pack as she scans my goldfish crackers, I feel like an adult. I got my first full check this Friday which, unfortunately, was originally nine hundred dollars, but was reduced to the upper end of seven hundred by the time the government was done with it, and I was thrilled. I paid my Verizon bill when I got home, and I didn't have to worry about how I was going to pay rent on the first. I'm beginning to need new wheels on my skates, and I don't have to wait for my next check to afford them. It's amazing how much having a small income changes everything.
Sure, I'm still a broke college student, but for once, I'm one of the less broke ones. I even have enough federal loans to pay for school in the fall without having to take out a private loan! Chris and I are thinking about moving when we graduate, and as elated as I was to move into this, my first apartment, I am even more excited about the idea of moving out of it. We won't be getting a much bigger place, but it will be nicer. It's amazing to be able to move up in life, even if only slowly, rather than having to live loan to loan wondering how to make six hundred dollars last a semester. I love it!
If this, my last "summer", is anything like adulthood, then I'm looking forward to the rest of my life. I'll be a little saddened to have to describe the year by months and not semesters or seasons and to sacrifice my summer, winter, and spring breaks for ten days of escape from Corporate America, but those are small prices to pay for the rewards of being an adult.
Growing up is difficult and unfair, I've learned that the hard way once or twice, but it's worth the effort. To go to a great job in the morning, come home to an amazing boyfriend at night, and not have a pressing deadline for school weighing down on me is the life that growing up has given me. Unfortunately, I look around at the world and some of the people who I've met at school and on the street here, and I realize that to grow old is easy, time takes care of that for everyone, but to grow up - to move away from home, graduate from college, find a respectable job, achieve dreams, and find happiness - that is something that you have to do for yourself. No one can help you, and I've learned recently that not everyone has what it takes to do it.
I'm still not sure why some people have it and others don't. Driving through Tampa, I look at the people with the buckets standing on the medians and corners with misspelled signs and shoes two sizes too small, and I wonder, what's the difference between them, me, and the guy in the BMW in the next lane? With regards to me, the answer, I hope, is that I just haven't worked long enough, but what about the guy on the median or the lady on the corner selling the St. Pete Times to the guy in the BMW for fifty cents, what happened to them? Where did they take the wrong turn - did they have a choice? What makes up that three feet between them and me? It's more than asphalt and a paycheck, it's decades worth of decisions - me going one direction and them going another. It's a life. I know that there are not answers to these questions, but still I wonder why some people can do it and others can't.
I'd like to say that it's tenacity, jumping through hoops, outlasting everyone else, but I don't know. All I know is that I seem to have whatever it is that makes me the young woman in the red Hyundai sitting at the red light on her way to work and not the man on the median with the misspelled sign and the shoes two sizes too small. I hope to be the guy in the BMW one day, but then again, I'm sitting three feet from the median. I guess that's life. I like where I am now though, and I love where I'm going. Sadly, not everyone can say that. I'm lucky. Here's to college graduation, great jobs, and new apartments - and may there always be time for skating and goldfish crackers.
