Neverland: Population 1?

　
    The Universe and I are 2 for 2 right now. I finally managed to get my grad school letters of recommendation sent out and I’m moving in to my new place next week. Unfortunately, I am still unemployed and still single even though I’ve filled out applications until my eyes don’t focus on print anymore and tried so hard to get my foot in the door with that talented, cute, funny writer I met two months ago. I managed to get my foot in the door , only to have the door slammed shut on it. The Guy has a girlfriend, and I am trying to resist the urge not drink all the Vodka and watch City of The Living Dead 57 times.
      Sometimes, I seriously wonder how I’m still alive. I am 23 years old and I’ve lived out on my own since I was 19, but honestly, I really don’t know how I’ve managed other than sheer luck. To illustrate: Today while packing up the contents of the kitchen cabinets I found a block of mozzarella cheese, you know the kind you buy out of the refrigerated section of the grocery store to put in your refrigerator at home? I found it in the cabinet where I keep the trash bags. It had been there well over a month. I know, because I was making jokes about loosing my cheese back in late November.
    It looked like the skin of radiation burn victim.
  
  There is also something to be said about having very little food to pack up and having a more than adequate supply of liquor, pain killers, and coffee. There was a time when I would make a joke about having different priorities. Now I just worry about myself. When am I going to get my life on track? When do I get to be a card carrying member of the adult world?

    I always thought it would happen when I was in a serious relationship with someone. I’m selfish and impulsive, but I’m all there is. I will buy an ice cream cake and eat for it breakfast for an entire week because no one can tell me not to. I will justify buying a two hundred dollar pair of shoes by telling myself that I’ll live off of ramen and cigarettes for the next month. I like to think I’d act differently if I had someone else to care about.
   I also thought it might happen after I get my graduate degree and land a steady job teaching. Then I would have nice cushion of security to fall back on and wouldn’t have wonder about how I would to make it day to day.
I am becoming aware that those things may never happen and I might end up like the guy I saw Kyle Kinane perform a stand-up bit about, living alone in a tiny apartment trying to write a song for a guitar and wrecking his bicycle because he had to call someone about the greatest hash browns he had ever eaten.
  If I must become that guy, I want to be the best weird, irresponsible loser I can be, but I know I probably won’t succeed because I have a habit of paying bills on time, showing up to places early, and being there when people need me. I don’t do any interesting drugs, so it’s not like I have anything better to do than those things.
    I feel like I exist in some kind of liminal area in-between child and adult and the more that I have to deal with the real world, the more I want to crawl back into the safe little rat’s nest that is Art School.

    
   Over the holiday, I spent sometime with some friends all of which happy couples who have pretty good jobs. I feel left behind most of the time. The majority of my friends have moved on to bigger better things and I find myself still languishing in Limbo. Imagine my surprise to hear them talking about how there needs to be some kind of class that teaches you how to function as an adult. Here they are trying to figure out how to buy houses and start up pension plans, when all they want to do is mod the Nerf guns they got for Christmas into Steam-punk ray guns.

   Albert Einstein once said, “The distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent”, and in the case of the individual I don’t think there is an exact moment where we metamorphosize into something else. I never stopped being the little girl who wants to be Agent Scully when she grows up. That's the primary reason I dyed my hair red.

   Maturity is a strange subject to tackle when we live in an age where college graduates are forced to move back home and teenagers are procreating like rabbits. I think adulthood is about trail and error. I’m still the same miserable fuck-up I have always been, but I know not to make the same fuck-ups again (Except for whole not chasing after men thing, never could learn that one). If I don’t die or set my apartment of fire in process I have successfully made it to another year of life.
  The more experiences we have, the more apt we are at dealing with the world. Sometimes you have to plunge headfirst into the abyss to figure things out, or call that accountant friend of yours that lives in Tampa and ask them.
At the same time we should never lose our childlike sense of wonder. You can be like my best friend’s Dad; work a steady, raise a child, and still have a room devoted to your Star Wars figures. What it all comes is finding that perfect balance. Stay out all night and come in to work the next morning with hang over until you know you physically can’t do it any more and then you give it up. You have to know when to hold them, know when to fold……

   Dammit, I’m quoting Kenny Rogers now. I’m opening that bottle of Vodka.