--> divine angst: it IS going to be a good week!

Monday, December 13, 2004

it IS going to be a good week!

My dear friend from college who I am excited to see on Friday in DC just got engaged. And suddenly (well, not suddenly, but again) I realize that I am at that age where my friends are growing up and getting married. Every time I get a wedding invitation or birth announcement in the mail, I go through this same sense of anomie: How can we have grown so far, so fast?

I do not think of myself as particularly old. Of course I am not old—I have not even passed 30—so I use the word "old" in a more metaphysical sense. I always seem to think of myself as younger than I am. For instance, my family thought I had waited a really long time to get married; I thought I was almost not old enough. I still sometimes think it's OK to shop in the juniors section at the mall, not because of sizes but because the clothes are cuter.

The other day, I looked at my refrigerator door and noticed that, instead of crazy pictures from bars and parties that have always decorated my kitchen, my magnets hold wedding pictures and, even more shockingly, pictures of my friends' kids. Oh my God, I thought, I have become my parents.

I have crossed the threshold. I am an adult. When we get together, my friends and I talk about home repair and taxes; we talk about the rising cost of insurance and whether or not Horizon milk in the paper box lasts longer than the store brand in the plastic jug. We don't gossip about who is sleeping with who, because everyone has a significant other. We watch our language because, chances are, someone's kids are in the next room.

So, even while I am thrilled and oh-so-excited for my friend, who deserves this happiness so much, I am also a bit wistful for the days when she and I were young and foolish, living on yogurt and ice cream in a small apartment in New York City. I feel a twinge of some indescribable loss, knowing that we really have left that life behind, in favor of the great adult unknown.

I never was one of those people who thought my youth would be "the best time of my life," so I know this will pass. But for the moment, I just can't help but feel a bit sad.