Blurred lines

Even though I graduated almost 10 months ago, I still don’t feel comfortable being a grow-up person. Maybe after the year mark. Then I can’t go back and say “at this time last year…”. I feel like I’m growing up to fast. I don’t know how to negotiate this fine line in between childhood and adulthood.

Yes, “childhood” ends at like age 10, but I just mean like the whole “parents taking care of you” stage of life. I mean it’s tax season, and I (God-forbid) have to figure out how to do it myself!! I just made my own dentist appointment for the first time n my life. Maybe it’s my parents fault for spoiling me.

Last week, I went home because I had the week off of work (thank you education). I flew back to the city on Thursday and when I was at the airport in Detroit, the airport was swarming with Michigan kids because they just got out for spring break. It was weird to see familiar faces.

As I got settled down into my nice exit row window seat, the hot guy in the window seat looked oddly familiar. (The middle seat was empty.) I couldn’t figure out how I knew him… if it was from somewhere in New York or if I knew him from college. It was just the most bizarre clashing of my two distinct lives because I couldn’t figure out if he was from the past or from the present. I feel like my life now is a completely separate entity from what it was before I moved here, and it’s weird when they over-lap.

Eventually, I figured out who he was. He was a door guy at the bar we used to always go to senior year. Every (and I mean EVERY) Thursday night we’d put on our semi-slutty-yet-trying-to-look-nice outfits and go out with no jacket and heels on, even in the snow. Jackets would surely get stolen and hopefully we’d have done enough pre-gaming to not feel the biting cold.

It was in that disgusting basement bar/dirty dance club that I have some of my best college memories. Cheap drinks, drunken dancing, kissing boys that I shouldn’t have, creating memories that we’d look back at and roll our eyes and laugh.

And there I was sitting on that plane, thinking that exactly one year ago this guy was checking my ID at the door as I was getting ready to make some probably not-so-wise decisions. And now he was sitting next to me on my plane to LaGuardia, me working on lesson plans and him reading a huge stock market book. Weird to think how much can change in one year, and how life really is a continuous thing, not two separate entities defined by a move across the country.