Sometime between this post and the last, I became an adult. It feels about the way I expected, which is to say that it's even more confusing than I could have ever anticipated.
I still listen to the same music, but now I also listen to people justify poor job performance. I'm still a rabble-rouser, but now I'm a professional rabble-rouser which sullies its purity, and strangers feel justified in calling me a fake even if there's nothing fake about 80/90/100 hours a week. I still am asking the same questions about who I am, but I've also gotten good at answering follow up questions like "When you had that life-changing experience that made you realize all the good and bad in the world, where did you fall between goals and projections? Did you have to develop a team along the way? How many people were involved?" The best writing I do these days can in a couple of minutes secure a candidate a salaried position but then doesn't matter at all.
The last ten months have made me a much better person, or a person I love more with less unconvinced posturing and fewer post-it notes saying "if you can't love yourself, how the hell are you gonna love somebody else?" I've recovered everything I liked about myself before I was paralyzed with fear and anxiety and puberty, but at the cost of having no time to ever divest myself of Boss Cara and be myself. I have a beautiful little apartment in a cheap but swank part of town that I haven't seen in the daylight for three weeks. There's a cat at the foot of my bed that gnaws on my toes each night that doesn't even have a name even though we've swapped his spit for my blood several times. I work with my potential best friends but I don't have enough time to come up for air to even realize that potential until we're sitting together in packed-up bedrooms or crowded bars saying goodbye as they move onto the next young adult adventure, and the cycle continues.
The people on the inside of this crazy mess of political organizing are all exhausted and the people outside of it don't appreciate the time you invest in them. I'm giving you my most precious possession: four hours on a Tuesday night that cuts deep into my sleep and jeopardizes my thin façade of professionalism as I roll into work in the same green jeans Wednesday morning. I'm calling you on my way home from work, squeezing you into my 20 minutes of alone time each day, only to have you respond that you're feeling too lazy for a "long" chat. I desperately need an escape back into the world where people do more than sleep and work, but no person wants to be an escape, and it's too obvious to everyone involved that that's what my friends have become.
Last year I had all the time in the world, and I squandered it on being the lamest, most larval version of myself: rolling over in bed to smoke a mid morning cigarette at 5 pm while Civ 4 loaded; spending 16 hours a day making plans until winter turned into summer - I could count the number of things I remember from that one long day on one hand. After an intense transformation, I've emerged a butterfly only to find out the beautiful summer's only 98 hours long, one hour a day at a time. I've come out of my shell, only to remember all butterflies are destined to ever do is migrate back and forth, inherently unable to enjoy themselves.
