Not Growing Up

Today, I was talking to my mom on the phone. She kept going on about how I will have to leave Saskatoon as soon as grade 12 is over, and that I need to grow up and be a man. I always wanted to grow up and be an adult when I was a kid, but now that I am here at the borderline... I really do not know if I want to be an adult. I understand the importance of responsibility and I understand I have to grow up sometime. But I also see merit in the light heartedness of childhood and see the potential to delay adulthood. Many of my actions constitute me as being an adult; some make me more of an adult than many of my peers. Many actions, though, still keep me in a state of childhood. I do not want to take on the responsibility and consequences of being an adult. Right now, I am living as a non-existent person, because I have forgotten to renew my papers. My passport is expired and my license needs renewing, I have assignment deadlines drawling up on me from all around, but I still (completely intentionally) put off working for things like this blog, conversations with friends, “hormones” as Mrs. James would say and Counter Strike. I have the ability to whip myself into adulthood but I can not justify doing so myself. I think I am clinging to the parts of childhood I might have lost when I was younger and doing my best to stretch out what I have of my youth. Our lives fly past our lives at a constantly increasing rate. I am stuck in a dilemma between clinging on to what is left and setting myself up for the future. I think this is as good a time as any to whip out my notebook of musings and post a childish excuse for a poem:

Grade 12

No matter how agog you objurgate
You’ll not silence the cheerful knell of times
But with mal spirit you can desecrate
The kid within as your adulthood chimes
Yet, you can’t abscond your obligation
To go from child to man and back again
For you’ll always need shards of your creation
As the effulgence of life begins to drain

And no matter how stoic your aberration
You’ll confuse yourself about your age
As your mind fumbles graduation
You’ll see both pain and joy in every page
The years engraved like marble silhouette
The question lingers: “are we grown ups, yet?”

Parts of our lives are forcing us to grow up but I am just avoiding letting them control me. I am stuck in limbo between childhood and adulthood. I am ready to live alone and function as an individual, I am ready to leave my parents, but I am not ready to understand and appreciate all the responsibilities involved with it.