I am a teacher of high school kids now, not the boundaries-confused 20-year-old I was when I started working with a teenage youth group. I feel further away from the experience of teenage intensity that I remember, and have a hard time understanding it somethings. I've got a decade on most of these kids.
When I introduced myself as "Angelina, the teacher" several times to surprised looks on our recent school service trip, it touched a nerve I didn't know I had: I no longer want to be mistaken for being younger than I am, let alone for a high schooler or college kid. I respect those age groups, but that's not where I'm at. "Do I need a haircut?" I wondered. "Is it that I'm short?" "What about my doesn't say 'grown up'"? (One friend claims it's because I dress "cool" - by which she means "not conservative." Casual might be the most accurate.)
And I've found myself oddly perturbed by the number of early 20 somethings I work with. They outnumber us older folk (I am marginally one of the older folk), and though I like them all individually, en masse they freak me out a little. It's totally an irrational response - but I think some part of me was ready to leave that energy behind.
So I wonder what the state of adulthood is - what is it that I'm wanting to move towards? Is it a steady well-paying job? A car? A home you own, or pay regular rent on? Is adulthood having a partner? Babies? It's hard to sort out the messages I get from society, from the media.
Or maybe it's not the state of "having" anything at all, not a constellation of responsibility or ownership. I know I perceive and respect connections between people better now, can hold and appreciate complex human relationships - step families, ex-partners, adopted grandmothers - as the nuance in people's lives. I'm fairly certain I'm a better friend than I've ever been before. I know to pace myself; I have a better sense of my energy. I'm better at trusting, generally need less control, am not determined to have a plan than I was only a year or two ago. I have a sense of vocation - a new concept when I applied to seminary - which is enough of a sense that I leave room for change, have not applied the reigns too tight.
Still, adulthood feels elusive - sought after, healing, quenching - but elusive.