And then I realized something: We are the tough women on the case. It's us. We're the ones raising the next generation to continue the fight against the patriarchy. We're the ones with blogs to spread the word against bigotry and intolerance. We're the ones refusing to laugh at sexist jokes and refusing to accept misogynistic payscales. It's us.
Now I'm caught halfway between "We are so screwed!" and "Me! Fuck yeah!"
It's me, it's us, we're . . . it. There isn't anyone who's going to come save us, we have no excuses and no great excess of time.
Okay, I got this.
Fuck.
What nobody tells you about being an adult is that it's not a pervasive feeling. You really don't feel any different internally at 35 than you did at 13. It's other people who are getting younger and more obnoxious, not that you're getting older. So you hit 18 and wait for it to happen, to become an adult. And it doesn't. You feel no different. 21 comes and goes and you can walk into any bar you want- and you still feel 13. 30, the first big one right?, and there you are, still fucking 13.
Except for every now and then when it hits you- hard- that you're the adult now. Somebody left you in charge of your own life and what the fuck were they thinking? Other people assume you know what you're doing. Younger people may actually seek your advice on things. And every now and then it hits you- you're the adult here. It's up to you.
After the shock of it all passes, I have to wonder: how much of the time did my parents, my teachers, heck, my doctors, spend wondering when someone was going to say, "Haha! Joke's over. Now here's some pudding and one cartoon before bedtime."
Or maybe I'm just the only one.
*That is a link to a listserv. For those of you any younger than I, prior to message boards, which is prior to myspace, which is prior to facebook, there were these things called listservs, which was basically like being included on a mass email forward, only of information you really wanted rather than bizarre, teaparty, racist, sexist "jokes".
