Growing up is so incredibly weird. Sometimes I can close my eyes and see the girl who used to wear really dark eyeliner, singing along to “Karma’s Payment” by Modest Mouse in her friend’s basement after drinking vodka for the first time. Other times, I realize that was ten years ago and I have no clue who that girl was.

I couldn’t see her today when I realized that I want to have a kid.

Not now of course. I’m not one of those awesome people who is so mature in their mid-twenties that they can have a child. I mean, I still rage quit League of Legends and I really hate doing my dishes and I forget to check my mail all the time and I can’t mop floors well. I should probably fix one or two of those things (along with finding a husband, buying a house, and tons of other Really Adult Things That Terrify Me that we won’t go into).

But I want to have a kid. Someday.

I’m not really sure what’s changed. A few years ago I was so anti-child it was disgusting. Moreover, I was proud I wasn’t going to be a mother. I looked down on people who had kids in their late teens or early twenties because I was never going to have one and I was never going to contribute to our planet’s overpopulation.

But, like I said, now I want to have a kid.

I guess this means that the angry twenty year old Rhea’s mostly left my blood stream and that she’ll be gone by the time I’m thirty completely. For years though, she’d convinced me that she’d never want kids. She’d never want to get married. She’d never actually grow up.

For years, that anger was palatable. It fueled me. It made me feel alive, like really alive–the only thing tying me to this planet and this life.

Then one day on Christmas Eve, I’m browsing Reddit and reading about a guy who got his kid a DSi for Christmas and I find myself thinking I should do that–when I have a kid, you know.

This thought almost doesn’t phase me. In fact, I realize I’ve been having it a lot lately. That’s the thought that does phase me, though, mostly because it’s so honest and natural it feels overwhelming. A complete departure my entire belief system I constructed years ago out of brick and mortar and other permanent fixtures that weren’t meant to change five years later on a whim.

I guess, though, they do change. And maybe that’s why growing up is so incredibly weird.

Maybe your mid-twenties is an awful time to realize that relationships consist of two people.

That your hurt isn’t uniquely yours. That there’s someone else who has feelings as well. That their feelings matter equally–no more, no less–to yours. That it’s not alright to just react to your feelings in a vacuum. That they’re only human, just like you, and aren’t infallible.

It’s an awful time because it’s something people often get after their first high school relationship. But all these years and a handful of relationships and somehow I never learned it; I always felt like I was an island, caught up in my emptiness and completely isolated in a sea of love. I turned that isolation into emotional distance. So many people have loved me and I’ve loved a couple of them back, I know that, but my love was always broken and faulty and conflicted. Maybe it’s because my dad used to abuse me, maybe it’s because I play video games and I’m emotionally immature, or maybe it’s just because I wasn’t ready.

Like I said, maybe your mid-twenties is an awful time to realize that relationships consist of two people.

But it’s better late than never, right?

While I’m at it, so this post just isn’t intensely awkward and personal, here are some songs I have listened to a lot lately:

Placebo – “Meds” — How it mattered to us, how it mattered to me, and the consequences / I was confused by the birds and the bees, forgetting if I meant it
The National – “About Today” — You just walked away and I just watched you / What can I say? / How close am I to losing you?
Of Montreal – The Past is a Grotesque Animal — Somehow you’ve red-rovered the gestapo circling my heart / And nothing can defeat you / No death, no ugly world