"then i'll be grown up"

I remember being in in fourth grade and talking with my classmates about what life would be like in 2020. At that point, it seemed so far away. I knew in a mathematical sense that I would turn 26 that year, but I had no idea what my life would look like at all. Like many children of that time, I figured it would be an era full of hovercars, like The Jetsons, Sonic Riders or Phil of the Future.

Now we’re living in that future. It’s 2020. Kobe Bryant is dead, the guy from The Apprentice is the president of the US, social media websites have taken over the planet, and we don’t have hovercars yet (though we do have self-driving cars). 

And I am 25 years old, in my third year of medical school in California of all places.

The thing is I don’t feel particularly different from who I was 10 years ago at 15.

I have many of the same interests that I did when I was 15. I’m rustier at Super Smash Brothers these days, but I can still play a good game with anyone who challenges me. I have extensive opinions on Sonic the Hedgehog and how Sega has mishandled that franchise over the years (see Christ and Cartoons # 4 for an example). I don’t read as much history these days, but I still go on the occasional Wikipedia run, reading articles about anything and everything. I still love learning languages and writing. I’m still a Christian.

And yet, I know mathematically that I am 25, a legal adult, a person who can get married, have children, vote, file taxes and drink alcohol without anyone blinking an eye.

I’m not disappointed in being 25—there are definitely perks to not being a teenager, and I wouldn’t give up my experiences over the past 10 years for the world. I guess I just thought that 25-year-old me would be different. I thought that I would be watching grown-up TV shows like Scandal or Criminal Minds or Game of Thrones instead of Animaniacs and Sonic X. I thought that adults were people who preferred to talk extensively about current world events with other adults over glasses of Chardonnay or that pink lemonade from Trader Joe’s. My friends from home and I do occasionally talk about current events (usually with a heavy dose of satire), but more often the conversation turns to superheroes, life happenings, and inside jokes built over years of friendship. I know teenagers who act older than I do.

Here and there the question comes to me: when will I be actually grown up?

Whenever I go home for the holidays, it feels like coming back to a familiar world again. My parents, thank God, are still alive and well and working as doctors. I wake up to the sound of my mother singing Christian songs every single morning, just like I did as a child. She often comes in and makes me recite the positive affirmations and Bible verses that she came up with for me when I was in childhood. After she and my father leave for work, my brother and I usually find each other and hang out for the day. Sometimes we go hang out with our aforementioned friends. Sometimes we leave each other and go hang out separately with our own friends. Other times we just stay in the house and watch episode after episode of cartoons or play a new video game. Our parents come back in the evening and we talk to them then. Usually at around the 10-day mark, my parents start telling me to do work. This lasts for about three or four days before I go back to school.

This is how my life has been seemingly for ages: school punctuated by breaks at home. Perhaps this is why I don’t particularly feel “grown-up” yet. But I know that this can’t last forever. Something will happen. Most likely it will be marriage—my friends’ marriages and/or mine.

Yes, I will graduate medical school and by the grace of God, get in to residency. And I will spend most of my time in a hospital in a place only God knows, and live largely separate from my friends at home and my brother. But our home base will always be our home base, until we find our life partners. Marriage can do that. Sometimes married friends stick around, and their spouses become your friends as well, and your social circle expands. Other times, as the marriage takes priority or the spouse’s social circle becomes dominant, you and your friend grow farther and farther away from each other, until you barely see each other at all.

That will change things. And if I get married, it will certainly change me. But what if I get married and I still remain the same person essentially? What if my husband also likes Animaniacs and Sonic X and plays a mean game of Super Smash Brothers? Will I ever “grow up” then? I don’t know.

But I will grow older and gain life experience, and ultimately, that’s all “growing up” is. Growing up isn’t just doing “adult” things, like having sex or getting drunk at bars or watching certain TV shows. Teenagers do all of that. Growing up is gaining life experience and learning from those experiences, and becoming stronger for them— a bit like a good role-playing game (RPG). I’m still similar to the person I was at 15, but 15-year-old me wouldn’t remember how God delivered me after reaching the lowest point of my life in my second year of college. 15-year-old me hasn’t taken the MCAT or Step 1. She hasn’t traveled to Europe by herself. She hasn’t spent a year fasting from video games and cartoons (the horror) and realizing that her friendships are much more solid than just shared interests. And she certainly hasn’t been in California for three years training to be a doctor.

All these experiences and more haven’t made me another person, but they’ve made me a stronger person. There are things that I understand now that I could never have understood as a teenager, simply because of experience. I can now help my teenage friends who are in college struggling through premed classes, or my younger friends who are struggling through the awkwardness of middle school. I can tell them that their low season is not the end, and I can advise them on what to do. And with time, as I go into new levels of life, I can pass on even more knowledge to those coming after me. Hopefully one day I can pass on what I have to my very own children. I reckon that’s what it means to be “grown up”.