Or is it just me?

I have nothing of substance to say to you this week. Nothing remotely funny, moving or entertaining to share because I’m too distracted by my birthday coming up this weekend. Not because I’m old and I need to cry about it, but because I can’t handle getting older. I don’t want the Older me to slowly swallow the Younger me, the only version of Melissa that I know.

Most people are plunged into deep self-reflection with each New Year, whereas I take what should be a happier time and brood over what I’ve accomplished (but mostly not accomplished) in the last year and try to figure out how time manages to pass so quickly.

I used to lovelovelove my birthday – it usually falls around the three day weekend and I usually celebrate the entire time. But after I turned 25 in 2004, I have lost the desire to celebrate the way that I once did. In fact, this year, I’d rather not have people acknowledge it at all until I sort of my issues with getting older. (Though the cupcakes from J-Rab and the card from Boston have been greatly appreciated).

Over the winter, I had a really long conversation with an old friend, Jersey. Last summer, Jersey left home and move to St. Louis in order to go to school and become Dr. Jersey (in the PhD sense, not the stethoscope kind). With the physical distance, Jersey was able to look at her life with a new found perspective, see it for what it really was, for what it would become. And she was scared. We agreed during that two hour conversation that adulthood can be hard and we didn’t like it. It’s easier to live as an adult when you don’t stop to think about being an adult. We turned a corner, not in terms of age, but maturity.

Suddenly, relationships take on new and immediate significance. We must find answers to questions that were waiting for us in a once hazy and distant future yet now have somehow hurtled their way onto our laps. Our careers define us to some extent. Hell, everything in part defines us – our jobs, where we live, who we love, what we love. Everything is supremely important to everyone else because they are scrutinizing it to no end, comparing it all to their own lives. Everything is a big goddam deal; and God, I don’t want it to be that way.

No one wants to run the errands or fold the socks or clean bathrooms or worry about retirement plans or be responsible for someone else’s feelings or hear from people who don’t even know you that you should “hurry up” and a) get engaged, b) get married, c) pop out a kid, d) all of the above before you shrivel up and figuratively ‘die’ at 30. But we do it. Or some of it. We move into adulthood, uncomfortable in our roles, and yet it seems like our parents transitioned earlier and better than we can and do.

Do we have a collective dysfunction? Don’t we trip all over ourselves to reach this point?

Did we not overrate the hell out of it?

Most of my friends are 28 or are going to turn 28 with me. Most of us feel at least five years younger. In ten years, will we finally feel our current age? Are we selfish, lazy, and unprepared? Or are some of you like me – scared to ultimately fail at Life?

So as I turn 28 on Saturday, I’m going to try to sit on the beach at Robert Moses, in attempt to escape the questions that have haunted me at this time over the last couple of years, all the while hoping that somehow the sunshine will be strong enough to dispel my fears and insecurities until at least Monday, so that I can turn 28 in some kind of peace, isolated from the sometimes big bad world known as Adulthood.

That or, Oldest Friend of mine or any other friend who’s around for that matter, feel free to call me up for some quality bar/Fire Island time. I’d rather my head hurt from hangover than from a long weekend of journaling about my state of maturity.

Last 5 posts by Melissa Montemale

• I'm Not Obsessed - July 25th, 2008
• It's Been a While - April 17th, 2008
• Protection - February 18th, 2008
• Generation Hook Up - February 6th, 2008
• Es Muss Sein - January 21st, 2008