The day Matthew and I went to the airport to fly away on our honeymoon I felt distinctly that I was running away from home. I felt childlike clutching my travel bag. It was just the two of us and I knew that in a few months it would just be the two of us all the way around the world. I didn’t feel like an adult. I felt like teenager running away.
In Korea, I felt as I did in college. I could be silly and ridiculous because I was a foreginer and since they thought I was strange anyways I might as well be free to have fun. I remember laughing loudly with the other foreign teachers as we walked down the street on a way to a restaurant. The locals looked and eyes and quietly moved passed and there was freedom and youth as we moved on.
Coming back to America felt, unreal. Matthew had a real job. We adopted a cat, bought a house, and then adopted two basset hounds. Life was busy! We painted the house, fixed up little projects, but still I felt a longing for my college friends. Everyone in out new town had children (many of whom Matthew was teaching) and they had their own group of friends and what did I have, that they had, that was in common? I was lonely that first year. Not a child but certainly not an adult. I was “so young” to everyone and I felt young. But when I would visit my college I felt out of place too, it was a weird limbo.
Last year I became the K-2 teacher and I remember when a parent asked me for advice on how to help their child in a particular area I thought to myself, “What? I don’t know! I wasn’t taught that!!” I still didn’t feel like I was an adult. Sure I drove a car, paid bills, and taught children but I felt like a child in my own eyes and other peoples. And when I got those letters...and saw how I was viewed as a professional and teacher...and person I felt even less like an adult as I wept at home.
This year there have been a few times where I have thought, “Wow. I feel like an adult now. And I think I like it.” The times I have thought it is when I am on my way to be with friends or when I am with friends, here in this new town that I think is finally beginning to be a little bit of a home. I don’t know what a real adult is or looks like exactly but I feel like I’ve been accepted into being an adult. I want to step into this..whatever this is, with God’s grace and help.
Most days I feel like me, and I’m not sure who that is yet, but sometimes I feel like I’m an adult now. Sort of.
