sometimes leaving is a joyful sign.

Lately I've been feeling... intermittently grown up.

And not in the horrifying way I used to imagine when I was fifteen and hiding in my room with my CDs and angry at several people and the majority of society. The horror of being adult then translated to a sort of numbed acceptance of the way everything was, a bland assimilation into the routine. It included sitcoms, FOX News, embroidered pillows, Free Cell, family Christmas letters, and, eventually, pink sweatshirts with kittens on the front.

I am understanding--slowly--that you can't necessarily peg people into a way of life based on these things, and therefore that you don't necessarily need to avoid them at all costs. What I was reacting to at the time wasn't embroidered pillows, but rather the frequent meaninglessness or tamed nature of the embroidered pillow. The way adulthood seemed to imply the need to delete the interestingness of the life you have for the commonness of the life that is ordained. I imagined eventually trading in an immensely cool foreign drape with some spectacular story behind it for the inevitable damned embroidered pillows.

My fear--nay, phobia--of becoming an adult is linked to my tendency to still imagine this scenario. Bit by bit, my quirks and souvenirs from life being ironed out by some horribly forceful Hand of Convention.

Thankfully, my curious feelings of growing up are not marked by a new set of embroidered pillows I bought.

This is what has contributed to the sensation:

1. If I was difficult to embarrass before, now it's almost impossible.
2. A staggering decrease in romantically-inspired angst. By forcing myself to face the reality of old relationships and invest hope in the potential for new ones, I am no longer plagued by constancy of conditions, and am no longer consequently feeling helpless. And coming to know myself in this state--remembering and reading some of the things I've said--helpless is so not an attractive state of being.
3. Expanding interests
4. Tolerance (but not in a I-will-submit-to-mediocrity-now kind of way, rather in a this-person-has-reasons-for-the-way-he/she-feels-and-I-recognize-that kind of way).

In other words, it's a much more Zen maturity than embroidered-pillow maturity. And it comes in little pockets I sometimes seem to walk into, where all of a sudden I'm immensely self-confident or understanding or forgiving. It doesn't last long--I mean really, I'm not the Buddha--but what's nice is that I remember, and so it leaves me with a way back to the wisdom. And as it happens more often, I rarely shoot into the opposite extreme.

I'm having this reflection behind a desk in the darkened bookstacks at the Reg, when really I should be finishing my Urdu homework. But have you ever tried that language? It makes the Devanagari script seem like a homey cabin with marshmallowy hot cocoa waiting for me.

I have a Philosophy of Human Rights paper due tomorrow morning, and since my mother always wants to read and subsequently "edit" my papers, I sent it to her. I had two papers due last week, both of which she lambasted me for, for turning them in before she could edit my grammar. Anyway, this was her response to my philosophy paper:

"JUST READ YOU PAPER, IT'S GREAT. lOVE YOU.

MOM"

Crazy lady.

...Happy Mother's Day.