gettin grown

I'm starting to see more of the dynamics of growing up. When I come home now at times I feel like I'm still in high school. My family and I have always been pretty tight, but I'm getting to old to be apart of the atmosphere in this particular context. Christmas and New Year's come with the expectation that I will be with family (not with boyfriend) on both days... and maybe I'm growing out of having that choice made for me year after year. I mean obviously I don't have a boyfriend right now, but if I don't spend Christmas with my family because I'm with my boyfriend I hope they know it doesn't mean that I don't love or care about them. It just means that I'm growing up. I try to cherish every moment I spend at home like this because I know that soon they will run out. One day I may even consider myself lucky that I am able to have the means to spend Christmas with my family, with possibly having to decide between my husband's family and my own (and God forbid he have two sets of parents too). I know that I won't always be able to claim the room upstairs or come home and lie around the house like a princess, so I must relish it now. That's why I don't have a problem coming home to see my family whenever I can... it's just that there is tension between that nostalgia and the forces that are driving me to be an actual adult. The remnants of my childhood are slowly slipping out of my hands and soon I will not be able to return at all to where I once was as my parents' daughter. I'm sitting here thinking "My God, what if I don't get into graduate school on the first try?" What will I do then? I aspire to do more than to come back home after graduation and get a job at Wal-Mart. I'm not knocking the people who do, but that's not what I'm meant to do the rest of my life. I know. Maybe it would be good for me to get off the fast track for a minute, but I want to get to where I can be self-supporting although that will probably distance me from my family... not nearly as much as my getting married would though. I don't mean distance negatively, but I'd have to get used to (and my parents would too) not involving my parents in every detail and step of my life. For me that is probably the big part of growing up. I mean obviously they don't have a hand in everything I do and every choice I make now, but getting to that point where I'm truly doing my own thing would be like "Wow, I really am at that point now." I mean I walk around my mom now talking about how grown I am, but OBVIOUSLY they are paying off my loans currently and I'm borrowing their money to go to school with. Of course I work for the money to splurge a bit at school, but they are the force behind the operation.

Ah well... I'm tired of talking and thinking about this now, so ciao.