It's pushing 2 in the morning. I should probably sleep, I've got work tomorrow, and I've got plenty to try and make-up for rest wise with the mild drinking and disrupting of my sleep pattern from the day before. But, I'm making the decision to write. No one's forcing me. I'm not acting in defiance of sleep. In many ways, I'd rather enjoy sleeping more. This is important to me and something I designate as a function of my being and mental fortitude. This is evidence I'd like to remain oriented and must share. This isn't something I apologize for, nor will me being a touch extra tired tomorrow be a surprise.
As a “mature” adult, I make decisions like this every day. Eat shitty expensive food, or don't. Drink what will become unbearable stomach acid and likely puke session, or don't. Speed, or leave a little earlier. Spend a few more minutes picking better suited pants, or continue to sweat in the expediently bought corduroy because they fit and they're here already. You can probably safely assume that, in one form or another, I'm going to make it to work, or haven't run out of personal days, or anticipate the coronary episode in my future if I don't eat better and up my cardio.
How do we designate maturity? Let me first explain how I see it manifest. Maturity is distance. You are mature when you put away “childish” things, and behaviors, and start to gain a kind of resolve to wherever it is you are in life. “Life's not fair” doesn't maintain throwaway slogan status as your parents may have used it on you while you were throwing a fit, but becomes a badge and tool in your “I get it now!” toolbox. You position yourself away from your friends who don't conform to the comfortable spot you've cut out for yourself. You position yourself away from your parents and all the dreadful mistakes they made in raising you. You put the hobbies or interests that would otherwise haunt you at a safe distance away from your responsibilities.
Maturity also seems to manifest as silence. Children whine. Mature adults stare with dead indifference or pity and condescension. You maintain silence for atrocity because it's all been done before, and will happen again. You're silent about any growing list of obligations because it's seriously long enough already. You're silent about when you make mistakes, because it's a lot more professional and common courtesy to blithely drape a sheet of faux civility over the not-quite conversations about nondescript, yet somehow galling, indiscretions. When asked to take responsibility, for anything, you never lead with, “good point” or “while that may be true,” instead opting to redirect and probe for the mistake happening over there.
I have my maturity called into question pretty regularly. You can't be a teenager who works their way up to management, graduate college, organize hundreds of people, keep all of your bills paid, build a house in the middle of nowhere, be trusted to protect other people's children, start and run a break-even business, remain open to connection after betrayal and heartache, or choose to pursue and hold precious a level of pragmatic idealism long dead in everyone you meet, and be considered to have a handle on how this whole life thing works, let alone yourself.
No, to be mature, you have to feel as smugly complacent in the resolved decision making of the broken horses around you. You have to “get it,” that the only thing left to achieve is the ingratiating of yourself to as many power brokers or gift givers around you as possible. If you can keep making friends, maybe you'll get invited to the lake and parties. If you can let go of how the past has impacted you, you can reemerge like a phoenix ready to tackle not just your past trauma, but the idea that anyone could ever wrong you again with this impermeable identity rooted in the stern gazes and relaxed shoulders of those ready to die.
I think the fluidity with which people change is like sleight of hand, but they don't acknowledge how much practice they've put in to trick you. Where once they may be encouraging and full of energy, you missed the years of times they whispered to themselves how something was no longer worth pursuing or how tired they are after work. When you found yourself taking for granted you could trust them wanting what's best for you, they were in the back, with a calculator, trying to make the math work for the relationship turned academic exercise. One of the surefire ways I know things have dramatically changed and/or need to die? What I do regularly or wear on my sleeve is thrown in my face as something I'm completely unaware of or don't practice. Hey Nick, I know you maybe write every week or two in insane depth as to where you are, and I definitely caught the last 15 statuses where you talk about feeling anxious or dead inside or just generally put-upon by a million-mile an hour brain and difficult circumstance or relationship, but have you ever considered trying to get to the heart of your trauma? What's that? 807 blogs? I mean, that's a nice warm-up, but when are you going grow up and do the real work? You wouldn't have to write so much if you just gave up.
Coupled closely with this is the idea that you would ever have to feel bad in “defending” me. If I'm not worth defending, don't. If you've been in a position where you were defending me, thank you. If you weaponize your support for me, it's no longer support. It doesn't exhaust me to be friends with you and I've literally lost “friends” for reasonably sticking by people who deserved it. If you agree with the naysayers, pick them, and then either discuss whether or not there's something that needs to change with me and why, or drop the act. If it's not a shared “of course” we're going to look out for each other, what are we doing?
I'm not interested in what counts as “maturity” in the vast majority of what I observe. I don't need self-satisfaction like so many empty accolades and titles with nothing tangible left to do on my plate. I don't pretend like I haven't ridden the wave of my bitching to ever-increasing levels of comfort and long-term stability. Every drunk and bitchy blog will exist alongside the ones where I talk about fabulous weekends with people I care about, the amount of years I've paid my bills in advance, and as I'm surrounded by more and more of the things I want to learn, sell, and create. My concept of maturity takes many many words, elbow grease over rubbing, and a kind of forthcoming dare to press your luck in service to overcoming what you're unsure or scared about. It's a kind of consistency in nature and expectation that doesn't change not because it's dead, but because it's so useful and meaningful and “loving,” it wouldn't know how to be anything else while remaining honest.
Maturity, so named and understood, is also about forgetting. I don't mean real forgetting, I mean forgetting how to recognize where someone like me is coming from in how I write and what about. Forget the anger and pain. Forget the obligation. Forget the dream. Never forget how you've been wronged, because you'll always need ammunition to try and remind me of what I'll never be forgiven. Everyone play the forget game so we can pussyfoot around the egregious nature of existence and consequences. People hate that I genuinely forget them. They hate that I exist, for as rounded by, independent of, their existence. This happens when people want to make a name for themselves in criticizing me, not accounting for and affirming themselves. Or, suspiciously, they find great resolve and purpose in conquering me! You know, how the hero of the story always shushes and runs from the dragon.
No, I'm not mature. I'm 30, almost 31. I'm the collection of demons in my head and physical shared realities manifested from the anxiety and spite I have for everything around me. I'm consistent in a way you refuse to be, and I'm accountable to a higher order than your mismanaged words and petty expectations. Remember, I'm always made to accept and move on very regardless of my wishes, work, or opinion. I don't rehash the past for the romance, but to extract the lesson plan. I don't reminisce to revel in the naivety. I don't remember your weaknesses so I can forge the weapons to reduce you to dust, but because I continue to draw motivation and inspiration in who you were or what I believed about what we could do in spite of them.
I'll find substitutes. Do you hate that about me, or you?
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