Is Growing up Giving in?

So,

Outside of getting married, and the usual. I have been activly trying not to grow up for the past 25 years. Thats not to say I don't take my responsibilities seriously, because I do, but I still feel I am at a good point between maturity, and immaturity. I guess part of me fears that if I grow up, I will lose interest in the handfull of things that bring me so much joy.



There is another part of me, deep inside my brain, that feels that maybe, if I lose my youth, I will lose touch with my sense of humor and compassion. I am a huge ballbreaker, and I pick on my friends fairly often, but in the same sense any time they hurt for any reason, a part of me hurts with them. I recently found out that someone that I went to school with when I was young had passed away. When I found out how, I had this lump in my throat, and knot in my stomach for 2 days. It felt as if, just by hearing about it, I was given just a taste of the darkness this person felt in thier life. I wouldn't consider myself a friend of this person, we haven't spoke in probably over 8 years. We used to go to the YMCA day camp in Erwin together. No matter how small of a role, or how large, people who were a part of a memory, even if they only had a walk on part, still complete it. Deep down I have this fear that as the people in my life fade away, they will take parts of that memory with them, like the foundation of a house crumbling.



All of this aside, natural progression of young adulthood in our society molds you into a certain category like it or not. That doesn't really bother me that much. I don't really try to change the things I do, unless I know that it has a deffinate negative effect on me. I try to focus on how my daughter is going to see me when she's old enough to start building her own personality. There is a good medium, I believe. I don't want to be the father that is trying to impress all of his kids 16 year old friends by smoking pot with them and accidentally leaving a 6 pack in the garage. Its funny, all of the dads/older guys I thought kicked so much ass when I was younger, are the same guys that I see now and wonder how they have survived this long.



All in all, I guess growing up isn't such a bad thing. We had a cookout at my house on friday and it was mostly couples that we have been friends with before they were couples. They either had kids, had kids on the way, or were on thier way to being on thier way in a few years. You know the one. It was different, it wasn't like it used to be when we would all bring a pack of hotdogs and an old english 40 and trash, and act like kids. For some reason, I had this sense of pride about how clean the house needed to be, How well the food was presented, and if there would be enough. It wasn't just that I was hosting the cookout, but I actually gave a crap about planning it. At one point when I had put my daughter down to sleep for the night, and returned to the porch to hang out with everyone, it hit me. I'm not a kid anymore, in fact, I feel like a grown up quite a bit. Most of all, I was happy. I realized that there is no place I would rather be.