Feeling grown up

This weekend seemed to bring about a lot of thoughts concerning maturity and growing up into my mind. I guess a combination of cleaning the old clutter from your room and declaring a huge step in life to family members will do that for a person.

For the first time in a long time, I went home Saturday to spend the night with my parents. I used to do this fairly often, but it seems that every since Justin and i started dating, there's just been a lot of events happening on weekends that aren't conducive to spending more than just the afternoon and part of the evening at home. Mom and I spent a few hours at Mamaw and Pap's that afternoon, doing the usual. Talking gardens, flowers, quilts, the latest family news. It was also this day that I had decided to tell them that I was moving in with Justin at the end of my lease term. I forewarned my mom the week before saying "We're going to tell Mamaw next weekend about me moving" to which she responded "We?" It actually went better than I had thought, but only because Mamaw had been expecting as much and seemed to have prepared herself. THere wasn't a lot of discussion, as she doesn't like the notion one bit, but it felt so good to have that off my chest. Mom and Dad have known for a few months now, so it's just been a waiting game with her.

Saturday night I holed up in my room to start cleaning out what had come to be a nine year collection of stuff in my room. A clutterbug/hoarder by genetics, I've started making myself go through my belongings with less tolerance for emotional attachments as of late, because really, who needs to hold onto class notes from that Business Calculus class you took your junior year of college? But over the course of three trash bags full of things to throw away, I found letters from friends, from old boyfriends, from people that I used to have such a good time with and somehow messed things up with along the way. Such is life I suppose, but it really made me stop and think about how bad of a friend/girlfriend I had been in past situations. And those thoughts then lead me to where I stand today.

I finally feel that it's the point in life where I'm a real, mature adult now. Despite the fact that I've stayed at his house for more than three months now, in exactly a month from today I'll be taking the first step to a more permanent relationship with Justin by officially moving in. No more backup plan of an apartment I'm paying rent on that I can run to just in case, just me and him in what will be my new home. I've never lived with a boy before. It had been contemplated at one point in time, but that was purely out of finanical concerns. And I'm glad that it didn't happen that way. It just wasn't meant to. And to add greater joy and meaning to the occasion, after the last bits of carpet have been cleaned and furniture moved into what will then be "our" humble abode, I will be able to open a great bottle of wine to share with Justin to mark our six month anniversary. To me, the stars couldn't be better aligned.

There was a moment last fall that everything changed. That as I look back, I can see where I transformed from an unsure, always indecisive, constantly questioning pre-adult, stuck in between the carefree days I had in college and the wanting so badly to feel like a respected grown up, to a live for today but think about tomorrow, place myself first on the priority list, be nothing but happy in all the decisions I make kind of woman. I finally put my foot down, said "No more" and stepped it up. And after living in my new perspective for a few months, everything started dropping into place like I had always hoped it would. And that leaves me here: staring at the horizon of a full life I'm going to live. The mistakes and naive decisions from the past will always be with me, but they merely remind me of how far I've come and where to not go back. My heart and mind are finally content.