growing up adventures...
Warning- halfway through this blog post it became an essay.
There are events your Mother sits you down and talks to you about before they happen. These life-altering changes are thus expected, and when able to brace for them they never seem as bad. For instance, my Momma had to explain all the lovelies that come along with becoming a woman and a changing teenage body. Although freaked out about the radical changes I would be encountering during my awkward junior high and high school years, I was prepared. Something has happened to me that my Momma never mentioned. No aunt or grandmother let on to this major event.
I have recently moved into an apartment with my boyfriend Clayton. I couldn't be happier. Along with the amazing things that come from living with your significant other there also come chores- laundry, grocery shopping, vacuuming, and paying bills. In addition to playing house girlfriend (you can't be a house wife if you're only dating) I am working at least 40 hours a week. And I (attempt to) cook dinner at least five nights a week.
My girlfriend who recently graduated and started her full time job one day described herself as boring during conversation. I shrugged this comment off because this particular friend is not boring. The exchange I had with her reminded me of a girls night sleepover I had with my cousins before a wedding just a few months prior. The married/engaged ones expressed themselves as boring, that they had hardly any friends and no time for themselves.
How these strong, wonderful women with fulfilling careers and homes could describe their lives as boring was beyond me. I didn't quite understand what they meant, but I was quick to suggest new topics to distract them from their odd thought processes. But now that I am living similar lives to them I am finally understanding the frustration each of them tried to express to me in their own way, all using the same dreaded word.
The last few weeks I have developed a pattern: Monday I grocery shop and cook after work, Tuesday I clean (both bathrooms, sweep and mop, vacuum, and dust) and make dinner, Wednesday is the ONLY night Clayton is not in class until 8:30 so we usually watch a movie or run errands and make dinner, Thursday and Friday always become filled with family dinners and errands. By the time I realize it the weekend is upon me, of which I spend almost all of Sunday doing laundry. I am in bed at night by 10:00pm, but am exhausted no matter how much sleep I seem to get or miss.
I am slowly losing touch with my girlfriends, I do not have the energy to visit the gym. I am thankful I have not yet made the commitment to an animal or a child, as I cannot imagine the never ending list of To Do's. I barely blog as it is. My life has become boring. There is a fine line between happiness in the mundane and losing touch of my self identity and I'm walking it. In college, if I happened upon a stressful/busy/tiring schedule it was easy to get through as the semester would end soon enough and spring break would provide reprieve. Now that I'm a grown up, real life doesn't have summer break.
I want to take this opportunity to assure you that I am not unhappy with the choice I made to share a bathroom with one boy for the rest of time. Thinking about designing our apartment, futures, and lives together makes me giddy. I enjoy cooking and nights spent staying in. Despite the new excitement of weaving our lives together, I can't help but wonder in the back of my mind if this is how it will be forever.
The thing I am most concerned about is not my ability to stay out late partying, but to retain my personality quirks and traits while attempting to fit into my version of the domestic goddess mold. I don't want to forget my dreams in the swirl of saving for a house and continually planning for tomorrow. For if my spontaneity and stubbornness diminish I will no longer be the girl Clayton fell in love with. Could my attempts at keeping a well run home while simultaneously working a full time job compromise one of the best relationships of my life?
While this may be a phase, I look to the women who tried to warn me of this epidemic. Do they still describe themselves as boring after becoming more efficient in the house wife/girlfriend role? It may be a matter of creating a better routine, re-examining my priorities, or just plain acceptance of my present state. I hold hope that the reason my older female generations have not shared this rite of passage with me has nothing to do with their fear of my settling down but is because it is not a lasting feeling. Unfortunately, all I can feel right now are the creases in my brow deepening, sure to spell out my fate across my forehead: boring.
