Being a Grown Up Sucks

Don't you remember a time in your life when you couldn't WAIT to grow up? Maybe you had just had a huge fight with your parents about your curfew or your boyfriend or how your particular boyfriend and his pimped out car with that big back seat were to blame for your embarrasingly early curfew. Maybe you were even younger and you couldn't WAIT to be a grown up so that you could use all of your "grown up money" to buy that Atari system or Barbie Dreamhouse that your parents told you was waaaay too expensive. You would show them. You would be able to do ANYTHING when you were a grown up - right?

And then - you grew up. And what the HELL happened? Sure, you don't have a curfew anymore....but you DO have that babysitter to pay when you get home. And sure, you can buy that Barbie Dreamhouse now......or you could use that money to buy groceries for the week. Or to pay dance school tuition this month...or to pay down that credit card....or fix that sink in the bathroom that drips..... Hmm - all of a sudden that Barbie Dreamhouse fades into the fog of distant memories. Along with that Atari you never got, the pony that never materialized and that BMW convertible that never actually appeared on your 17th birthday with a red bow in the high school parking lot. At some point, we all realize that being a grown up isn't really all it was cracked up to be when we were 7, 11,or 16. Being a grown up is hard and sometimes it really, really sucks.

No one ever told you that once you were grown up - you would have the pleasure of experiencing all of the torture of elementary and middle school again - through your kids. AS if 4th grade long division homework wasn't excruciating enough when YOU were in fourth grade - you now get to experience it all over again with your kids. And if you somehow missed out on being tortured by the mean girl or jack-hole boy in your class fear not! For that particular kid's son or daughter will SURELY select YOUR child as his or her own piece of toilet paper for at least 6 months. And if you were waxing poetic about that teacher who just hated your guts and was mean and unfair to you...well, don't get too misty eyed. For that teacher lives on through another. And she or he is even meaner, uglier, smellier and more degrading than YOUR teacher ever could have been.

But that's the stuff that takes wimpy-assed, novice grown ups down. It takes alot more to take me, or PC, or Sookie or Fifi or Hermione down. Much more indeed. The stuff that really sucks, the real shitty thing that NOBODY ever tells you when you're little is that sometimes, when you are a grown up - life is really, really unfair. And there is no rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes good things happen to bad people. Sometimes people who behave badly are revered by millions and reap financial rewards from their ridiculous, irresponsible behavior - look at Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan. And as hard as that is to swallow - it's even harder to explain it to your 10 year old. Speaking of explaining shitty things to your 10 year old....

No one ever tells you that you might have to say terrible things to your kids. Things that you know will just tear them apart and rip them to shreds. And I'm not talking Tiger Mother shit. I'm talking about things like: your brother is really really sick and is going to die. I'm talking about conversations like: so and so's mommy got really, really sick and died over the weekend. THAT'S what can take even the toughest grown ups down for the count. How do you explain to your 10 year old that, yes, indeed, even Mommies die. And that no one knows why God does what he does and takes Mommies away from their kids when they need them the most. And that no, you didn't do anything to make your brother die. Even though you secretly wished that he was a girl - that didn't make him sick and that didn't make him die. I promise.

How do you - as the all wise and all knowing grown up - answer questions that have no answers? How do you promise your kids that just because Mrs. So and So died doesn't mean that you will die. Do you promise them that you won't die? Do you make a promise that you can't keep so that they can sleep better at night? How do you not express your fear and outrage when a wonderful, generous, loving mother of three just disappears from the lives of her children?  Yet a self destructive JACK HOLE of a man makes an ass of himself on the internet and acts as if he is indestructable and immortal and lives on to party another day. How do you not express YOUR anger at God, YOUR bewilderment and YOUR fear? But you can't - 'cause YOU'RE the GROWN UP! Your job, as the grown up, is to help your kids make sense out of the nonsensical. And that can be really difficult. No one tells you about this shit when you are plotting revenge against your mean mother who is keeping your 15 year old ass home from the REM concert where you would most likely get drunk or high or ARRESTED - or all of the above.

Our school community lost a good, good woman over the weekend. She was the mom who was ALWAYS there - picking up the slack for the rest of us. She had 3 children who adored her, and who are going to bed tonight without the kisses, hugs, snuggles, stories, songs or whatever it was that she gave them night after night for their whole lives. She had a loving husband who has to somehow find the strength to go on without her and raise their children and face all of the parenting hurdles he thought they'd face together all by himself. I'm sorry to say that I didn't know her very well. But you didn't have to know her well to know what kind of woman she was. As my Dad would say - she was "good people". And she will be missed.

There is no easy way to make sense of these tragic losses. Trying to figure all of this out really sucks. Why is it that it's only when we get to BE the grown ups that we truly appreciate how great we had it as kids? No one expected you to understand the hard stuff.