Grow Up Already
Do I Need To Slap You?
We all need time to heal from pain. We all need a venue to rant and rave, and be disappointed about how things turned out, and we all need to tell everyone what a slimebag we somehow married and lived with for however many years.
But at some point we need to move on, grow up, and take responsibility for our lives.
It’s a funny thing, because most of us couldn’t wait to grow up. We absolutely could not wait to be independent and make choices for ourselves.
Just think about the power a two-year-old feels when she finally learns the use of the word, “no.” Even before she learns how to stop pooping in her pants, she’s trying to exercise some independence.
So what happened?
You’re all grown-up, right? Making decisions for yourself. Charting your own course. Plotting your path. Aren’t you? Or are you just going through the motions, in permanent dress-up mode?
To me, adulthood is all about responsibility. Taking responsibility for your own actions and decisions. Making your own bed and sleeping in it, and being your own safety net.
So many people won’t take responsibility for their own actions, let alone their own lives. It’s always somebody else’s fault. Or the way they were raised.
Parents didn’t give them support. Dad was never around. Mom played mind games. Husband turned out to be pond scum. Yes, I suppose all that is true. Families are indeed complicated, and often pretty darn screwed up. A lot of really weird stuff goes on, and I don’t think anyone escapes their family situation without a few pieces of bulky emotional baggage.
But nobody says you have to carry it around the rest of your life.
At some point in your life, you must let it go. At some point in life, your life must become YOUR life. At what point in your life is that going to be? DEATH?
I sure hope not. The sooner you can dump that baggage, the sooner you can live your life fully – as a fully-fledged adult.
But you can’t go forward if you’re always looking backwards. You can’t move your life ahead if you blame everything that has happened on someone or something else.
Which is not to say that everything in your past hasn’t affected your present in one way or another. Of course it has. Our varying backgrounds make us well-rounded, interesting individuals. And can also make us neurotic, babbling wrecks.
But no matter what your past, it needs to be a springboard, not a lead weight. As an adult, the only person who ties you to your ancient hurt and disappointment is you. You’re the only one who can continue to pick and pick and pick at the scar so it stays a yucky festering wound forever. At which point it ceases to be an old hurt and turns into a big fat juicy excuse.
It’s much easier to blame something in your past over which you, at a tender, innocent, pink-cheeked age had no control, than to go through the effort of changing old behavior and moving forward.
But you know what? The world generally doesn’t care what happened to you in the past. The world couldn’t give a rat’s ass that you had a tough marriage. The world sees you as you are, and judges you right now, this minute.
What’s more, the world doesn’t care if you had an awful marriage, or a tough year or a bad hair day. The world, collectively, will shout, “Get over it.”
We’ve all been emotionally (if not physically) bruised and battered along the way. But the bruises are only permanent if you allow them to be. That’s the choice you make.
Once you are on your own, every choice you make is your very own. Other people can tell you what to do until they’re blue in the face, but the actual specific action you take is YOUR choice.
No matter how painful your marriage and divorce was, how difficult your circumstances, how unfair your situation was (or is), at some point you absolutely must accept sole responsibility for your life as an adult, with the power to move beyond the past and into a future you create.
If you’re using your past to excuse or rationalize how you’re living your life today, you are essentially admitting you are powerless to affect change. Like a child who cannot control his environment, you are locking yourself in the highchair of your past. You might as well put spaghetti in your hair, throw your rattle on the floor and wet your pants while you’re at it. You’re going to be miserable for a very long time.
It’s scary to be completely accountable for yourself. To admit you must shoulder blame for where you are today, and will be tomorrow. But unless you accept that burden you will never be able to dump the baggage. The only route to emotional maturity is through accepting responsibility for your life from this moment forward.
And that is the precise moment you become a real grown-up.
Still feeling some growing pains? Email me.
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