I might be a grown-up but I'm still growing up

I can be quite an excitable person. Although I do not get excited about Christmas or birthdays, I get squealy over new film or TV releases, epic wins such as same-sex marriage, and kittens. (If you don't get squealy over kittens, I suggest you have your heart examined, although the same might be said of my lack of googliness over babies.)

I'm vaguely aware that my behaviour is not always very... grown up. I have the advantage (?) of being short and I think (without any scientific evidence to back me up whatsoever) that short people are allowed to be less grown up for longer. My evidence for this is that my sister is tall and she has always been quite grown up. Usually she looks after me, even though I am the elder sister.

Growing up is not just about making it through education or work, and taking on "grown up" responsibilities like a mortgage or kids. It's about negotiating your way through friendships and relationships and just life in general, and not necessarily coming out unscathed. It's about learning how to handle successes, defeats and experiences.

For me, growing up is watching your childhood home be packed into boxes and seeing my mother prepare for a new life in another county, and not feeling bitter or abandoned but feeling proud and content to say goodbye. I never liked that house anyway; it was haunted. (I kid, I kid...)

For me, growing up is working out who to make an effort with, and when to recognise that you have drifted apart from someone that at one point would have been your everything, and to let it go. Growing up is recognising the loss, and being okay with it.

As someone still growing up, I'm still figuring out whose opinion should matter to me. Once upon a time I would have cared what everyone thought. And when you made a mistake, you thought everyone was looking, and judging you. But I suppose life is a bit like being a learner driver. When you stall in your car, you might think that everybody is staring and laughing and pointing and you feel mortified. But everybody has stalled before, both in life and in their car*. It's easy to falter in new situations, or even familiar ones. You can stall at the bottom or the top of a hill. What's important is that you get going again. Forget the people you think are paying attention to your mistake. They are probably too wrapped up in trying not to stall themselves.

I learn every day more about who I am, and who in my life I care about and whose opinions matter to me. I can respect your opinion, and yet not let it affect me. And I am still working out my opinions.

Although... if your opinion is that women shouldn't be in power/flying planes/doing anything except getting their tits out, cleaning the kitchen and making you a sammich, then I will declare your opinion stupid and I do not have to listen to it.

Come back when you've got something far less sexist to say.


*this metaphor really only works for those who can drive. But the idea of stalling - essentially a false start, being unable to get the right balance of power and clutch - is applicable to everyone.

Also, here is my breaded cat, running with the sandwich/cat theme. 

Nom nom nom.