The Inevitable Evolution

Confession: I don't do well with change.  Not all change, necessarily, but definitely the important kind.  For example, I find it necessary to rearrange my apartment every few months because I can't stand having the rooms remain stagnant for too long, but I don't know what to do with myself when I hear that my sister and her family may be moving out of Hawaii (which, thankfully, didn't happen after all).  I also look forward to and need my own life's big changes whether they be moving states, starting school, making a lifestyle change, etc., but when changes happen that are out of my control I sort of freak out a little bit.  I didn't know this about myself until it was pointed out to me by a therapist when I was 14 (see my post on being brave), after I'd created a miniature world devoid of humans who, inevitably, "just mess everything up."

Given all of this, it comes as a big surprise to me to realize that, sometime over the course of the last eight years, I did some quiet, unsolicited changing of my own.  Up until now, I'd always been that naive girl who said things like, "I don't think I've changed at all since xyz.  I'm still the same person."  Well, as it turns out, I'm not, and nothing points that out more than a visit with those who know/knew you best.

It isn't the easiest thing to deal with, realizing that you're no longer a child and your parents are no longer invincible or all-knowing.  It's harder still when the values you now hold to be important no longer line up with the values of your family.  And it's even worse when neither side knows how to cope with that and instead end up either criticizing, or trying to knock the other down a peg or two.  Simple questions and statements can become landmines: When did you start caring about the environment?  Don't you have normal food, what's with all this fancy stuff?  If I had it my way, we'd just use our nuclear weapons and get out of there already.  So, what, are you ever going to use that law degree or was that all for nothing?

I'm not saying that my views are the right views and theirs are wrong, because I realize that different experiences, different worries go into shaping those views.  It just makes you feel very far away from those you're supposed to feel closest to, and it makes you almost hate the changes you've gone through over the years that have created that distance between you.  Being an adult and a child at the same time isn't the easiest position to navigate, particularly when that child has grown into that adult away from home and away from family.  It's then that those changes seem to rise up and slap you in the face once you're together again.

I don't mean to sound like I think that these changes are insurmountable, or that they're even unique to me and my life.  I'm betting that most people go through some variation of this experience in the course of their lives, especially if the life they're building for themselves takes a path far different from the one they were raised on.

I'm just saying that it isn't easy.  Change, apparently, rarely is.