Best and Worst thing about being a grown up

[Amelora]

For me the best thing about being a grown up is living on my own and leading my life the way I want too. Growing up with the type of mother I had was very rough. My mom believed that in order to have a good and happy family we must be like the 'leave it to beaver' family. Needless to say we weren't. As I grew up I became more of a free thinker, I enjoyed doing things my own way and beating out my own path. This was highly discouraged as it might make us look bad. Or even worse my mother might not know what I was talking about, and if mother didn't know about it than it didn't have a right to exist. Things my mother didn't know about included fashion trends, computers, ecology, psychology, art, most sciences, anything to do with bettering yourself, anything spiritual etc.

Now that I am living on my own I am free to pursue these things. The odd thing about it is the more things I try to pursue the more simple I want things. I cook my meals from scratch, I have learned how to sew and I am learning how to knit, I am going vegetarian, I bake my own bread, apple butter, pies etc. Mother for all her trying to be a perfect mother would have never thought to do any of that. Not that any of those things make you a good mother, but the image she tried to portray was nothing like what was really going on at home.

The worst thing about growing up is coming to the realization that no matter how out of your hands something maybe it is still your job to fix it. It too me a long time after leaving my ex to realize that no matter what awful things he did to me, the only person that would help me get my life back was me. Hell even before that I had to learn the only person who can help me leave him is me. And I had to come to terms with the fact that I let it get as bad as it did. Did I deserve any of the things that happened to me - hell no, but I was the only one with the power to stop him before it degraded into what it became. I know you will say he had the power to stop it. But he didn't want to stop it, the only person that could was me. And I could have stopped it way before I did. There were so many signs and I just brushed them off, or made excuses. In the end it was me that re-made my whole life. And that was one of the hardest adult lessons I have ever had to learn.