February 16th

Dear You,

So I always thought I'd know when I became an adult. Not sure when I got the idea but it was always sort of there. I'd hit a certain age, Twelve-zero-zero AM of whatever, year whatever, and something in my head would click over like a track changing and I'd be grown up. Just that simple.

Yeah, it's not that simple. If you haven't figured that out by now you will. I'm still waiting for that feeling. I don't know what defines it. I guess maybe I used to think it was all the stuff that people have when they grow up: a wife, 2.5 kids, 3 bedrooms and 2 baths and a yard, maybe a pet or two. A car of some kind, maybe more than one. A job. A college degree. That's not how my life went, and at some point maybe I thought I never would grow up, because I didn't have any of those things and the way my life was going I never would. I had a job, which consisted mostly of being bored out of my mind waiting to kill people and then killing people and then being bored again, or maybe walking or driving or flying somewhere (travel like that is endless, it's its own pocket of spacetime, and I hope you never learn that firsthand). I wasn't home a lot, and home was a shitty apartment in a shitty little suburb outside Trenton, NJ. No pets. Not even fish. No college degree, though I did mean to get one a long time ago. I had a car, which was not so shitty but only seated 2 and sometimes didn't run and the heat worked pretty much whenever it wanted to. A couple of girlfriends, but it never really went anywhere, and sometimes I think that was intentional on my part. No boyfriends. That... well, that really wasn't possible for a lot of reasons. Let's just say that not everywhere is as free in its thinking as this place.

No kids. That I knew of.

I'm joking. I hope.

And then Yugoslavia happened, and then the Realm (I'll get around to telling you about all that later), and then here, and then you happened. And am I grown up yet? I have no idea. I'll tell you one thing for sure: I don't believe anymore that it's this thing that just happens to you in a second, or even a few years. I think maybe it takes a lifetime, and maybe it's supposed to. Maybe it never happens at all. But maybe it's not the point anyway.

You'll probably want to be grown-up at some point. Don't rush things. Trust me. Be good. Listen to your mother. Give Tom hell for me. Do what's right and don't worry about the rest of it.

More later. I love you so much.

-M