I’ve been saying for a while that I don’t feel I deserve my management position at work. Not that I’m unqualified or feel that I’m doing a bad job; I know this business pretty well and I’ve been at it for a long time. It’s just that when I get to work or sometimes even when I’m going to work I’ll think to myself, “Really? I’m a manager? I still feel like a waiter playing manager.”
It’s been a pervasive thought for a while now and I think I finally found the root of the problem, the reason that I feel this way. Because I am not an adult. It’s strange, frustrating, and debilitating. I am 32 years old but I am not an adult. I am still a boy. A very, very hairy boy.
I feel more kinship with my friends’ teenage children than I do with my friends. I saw an older married couple walking down the street from my bus window and I couldn’t feel any connection to them, even though they’re probably not that much older than me. It’s in everything I do: the music I listen to, the clothes I wear, the shows I watch, the food I eat, the way I flippantly spend money on crap that doesn’t matter. I drink heavily and party all night and watch cartoons and scoff at authority and live as though I will never die.
But I will.
I don’t do anything. I rarely plan for the future. I mean, yeah, I have plans next month, even stuff to do next year, but as far as my future goes, I can’t see anything. I would be content to keep working the job that I’m working now, keep drinking and staying up all night, keep the same stupid goatee facial hair pattern and sleep, eat, drink, work, and die.
That’s not an adult life. I am doing things to try to trick myself into growing up, i.e. – getting this management position, clearing up my legal record, marrying the woman of my dreams, trying to establish a line of credit, getting my passport, etc. All the things that an adult already has down, things that they don’t even think about; they just do them instinctually. I have a screw loose or something, because I’m not wired that way.
Maybe it’s arrested development. My brother committed suicide when I was 16 years old and I suppose when a person of that age has to come to terms with something like that, they handle it in one of two ways: either they grow up very quickly so as to be mature enough to accept the tragedy, or they stop growing up and remain that age indeterminately. I think I did the latter.
Sure, I’ve got a fifty cent vocabulary and I’ve read a few books, but that doesn’t make me a man. I’ve walked this earth as long without him as I did with him, but I still can’t escape the damage his departure inflicted upon me. I’ve seen many things and I’ve wrapped my mind around the finer insinuations of human nature, but it doesn’t mean I’ve grown any more. I have age and a modicum of wisdom, but whatever self-awareness an adult has, I don’t have it. I just don’t see myself as an adult.