Am I a Grown Up Yet?

On the 6th of September I will turn 22. I'll be somewhere in Amsterdam, four days into a three week trip around Europe with two of my best friends. But I'm not the type of person to let anything get in the way of a party so I've opted to have an unbirthday. And you can't have an unbirthday without an Alice in Wonderland theme. My mother was quick to point out that any kind of Disney themed party wasn't appropriate for a 22nd birthday party, but where she sees 'childish' I see 'young at heart'.

And that got me thinking. I remember when my 18th birthday was approaching I thought to myself, "This is it. I'm going to be an adult now." I don't know what I was expecting. Some kind of overnight transformation maybe? In any case, if I was supposed to somehow magically transform into an adult on my 18th birthday, it never happened.

In fact, I've found myself preparing for adulthood in the lead up to every birthday for the last 5 years and have woken up every 6th of September still very 'young at heart'.

I took a gap year before I went to uni so I'm still safe and snug in the bubble of university life for another year, but a lot of my friends graduated this summer. They're real people now. They're looking for real people jobs and doing real people things. Jonny has already accepted and then quit one grown up job (although that's an entirely different story), and Coley has moved to Plymouth in a real house, not a student house where there are random traffic cones littered around the place and the most reliable piece of furniture is a table made of old pizza boxes. They're adulting!

It's concerning that we are adults, supposed upstanding members of the community, when we're still doing the same nonsense we were doing when were fourteen. Alice in Wonderland birthday parties, planning trips to Wiggly's Fun Farm, talking about absolute rubbish ("Guys, would the Chinese be so developed if they hadn't invented glasses?").

People I know from school are engaged, having babies and renting houses. I spent the majority of yesterday afternoon gluing googly eyes to plastic flowers for my Disney-themed birthday party. When did adulthood creep up on me and will this be the year that I finally conform to it?

Twenty two sounds awfully grown up, but then again so did nineteen, twenty, and twenty one. And no doubt this time next year I'll be wondering whether I'll finally become a grown up when I turn twenty three. But if the collection of top hats, white rabbits and pocket watches I have stashed under my bed give any indication, my unbirthday will certainly not be a grown up affair.