Growing Pains

I realized a few months ago that I've been waiting around for someone to turn up and tell me what to do with my life. I don't know who, exactly, this person is. All I know is that whoever this person is, he or she is not coming.

I don't know why I started believing this. Maybe it's because for 18+ years of my life I have been told what to do. The course was set for me. Go to school, go to college. I even chose a profession, nursing, in which people were constantly giving me orders and my job was to carry those orders out. After college I joined the military and was told what to do for another four years. So I suppose it's no wonder that from the age of 27 until the recent past, I've been floundering, waiting around for someone else to step in and tell me how to live my life.

I just had an epiphany a couple of months ago, right around my 30th birthday, that this person is imaginary, and that the only person who is responsible for my life is me. It seems so simple, but it was a really hard concept for me to grasp.

I am responsible for me.

The thing about waiting around for someone to show up and tell you how to live your life, tell you what decisions to make, etc, is that when things aren't going your way, you always have someone to blame, even if you don't actually know who they are. It works for a while, but overtime, I started to get a clue that blaming this imaginary person won't reverse any natural consequences associated with avoiding my life, and that ultimately, I'm the one who is hurting myself.

This phenomenon played out just this past spring. I had waited for over three years to go to see a dentist because I was waiting for someone to show up and tell me I needed to go. Even when I was in the military people told me I had to go and they booked my appointment for me. But last April I finally made my own appointment and went, and I was terrified that I'd be punished for waiting so long. As it turns out, I had three, maybe four cavities, I don't even remember, and one of them was so deep that I was close to needing a root canal--I still might, only time will tell. I cried in the dentist chair that day, cursing myself for waiting so long, and angry that I couldn't curse someone else instead.

I recently told my mom about all of this--about my recent revelation, and she said that I'm quite young to be figuring this out, but I feel like I'm catching onto this nugget of wisdom a little late in the game.

I realize now that if I refuse to open a bill, it won't pay itself, and it also won't magically disappear. My teeth won't become impermeable to decay and plaque just because I refuse to make myself a dentist appointment, and my problems won't go away just because I don't want to deal with them.

Gosh, why is life so hard? Can't I just be a kid again?

So, all of this is to say that I'm thirty years old and I just realized that I am, in fact, an adult now, and my job is to take care of myself and my little chitlin's who still do need someone to tell them what to do. And in all honesty, I don't want to be a kid anymore. There's a lot of responsibility that comes with being a mature adult, and sometimes if feels like a lot to carry, but I would never want to go back, not even if you paid me to. So it's time to turn over a new leaf.