Holy shit.
I was musing earlier about how I don't really feel like I've grown up much in the last few years, not even changed significantly. More like I've ...morphed (mutated? both of these terms seem rather perjorative). Then my bored insomniac nature led to me reading old OD entries, and I take it back. I take it way back and then squish it with my foot and then remain standing on it so that as long as I don't move no one notices what I'm standing on. I see 21 year old college kids now and mock them internally for acting like high schoolers, because surely I wasn't like that. Except I was. Completely. Unfotunately keeping typed records of my thoughts/emotions makes denial so difficult : ) Seriously, I roll my eyes at myself. A lot. Then I went and looked up people who used to leave me notes and friend requested them in hopes of figuring out if it was just me who sounded ridiculous as little as two years ago.

So maybe I have grown up. Not that I feel things differently or less strongly, more like I seldom feel things singularly. Angst, for instance (the quinessential adolescent emotion), isn't necessarily gone. It's still there. The occasional weight on my chest, the overanalysis. But it's never all-encompassing, there are always other things there too. Instead of a black hole, it's now more like a sunspot. Inevitable, springing to awareness with no obvious reason, but with few ill effects. It's like multi-tasking emotions. It makes sense, I guess, life and relationships are seldom built of only one substance, and perhaps focusing on only one is the very nature of dysfunction, whether in the form of obsession or despair.

Life is good. Which is new, odd, and scary. Somedays  I find myself holding my breath waiting for the other shoe to drop. It should not be this easy. I stumbled accidentally into a job I love and am seriously considering keeping as a career. I like where I live. While my friends are low in quantity they abound in quality. I feel like I'm playing pretend in someone else's world. Like I'm playing dress-up. Not literally, since I wear jeans everyday. But teachers and parents and acquaintances ask me questions, and an answer springs unaware from my lips, and I'm amazed that it sounds intelligent and might actually be true, and then they just believe me. No suspicion due to my age, over my lack of having children, no question of what makes me an expert. Nothing. They just trust it to be true. Strange. Crazy.

It humbles me greatly that I may be the only chance for the kids I work with. How well I do at my job could quite possibly make the difference between them growing up to live semi-independently, or being in adult diapers with a vocabulary of less than 20 words. Sometimes I'm not sure I even have the right to have that much of an effect on someone's life, but if it's me or no one, then I intend to do the best I can. Thus far I have a 6 year old who could communicate no words when I started with him two months ago, and he can now sign 6 (still holding out hope to encourage speaking, but it's a slow tedious process). I have a 10 year old that 4 weeks ago compulsively yelled more than once a minute, and now he can be silent for 30. The first time the 6 year old repeated an 'e' sound, I spent the rest of the day happy and untouchable. And there are good days like that, when I feel like I'm really making difference. Most days I have that nagging feeling that I should be doing more. Not in a bad inadequate sort of way, but in a there is no time to relax and pat yourself on the back when a kid only knows 6 words.

Coming full circle (more like, spontaneously changing the subject back to the one I started on), I feel some nostalgia here lately. Mainly manifested in the form of curiousity. I want to know what my friends from high school are doing. All those people I lost touch with simply because I'm no good at replying to emails and phone calls. Maybe I'll pick it back up and get in touch. Maybe I won't because I know I'm no better at the email and phone call thing then I was when I lost touch to begin with. Maybe the growing up thing is that I just feel less self-absorbed. Cuz, you know, maybe the world doesn't actually revolve around my minor annoyances and emotional quirks. Maybe I just feel more meaningful. More and more I think the ever-searching pseudo-religious quest for life's meaning is silly. I don't think anyone's life has one meaning, one option, one path. At some point you just have to pick one, hope it's right, convince yourself it is, and run for it wholeheartedly. Or maybe I'm only making my personal decisions sound like large existential ideas. Maybe I'm becoming a cliche. I'm not sure it really matters.