I Belong! for now...

I have discovered my people. I am "Before the Mortgage" or, as the qhote from Bust defines it, "the post-college, pre-parenting, quasi-adult limbo demographic." Quasi-adult reminds me of Quasimodo, the hunchback who favored Nortre Dame, but seeing as how I am feeling progressively more freakish amongst my marrying, house-buying, baby raising peers, it's a pretty apt image. I've been asking myself, "what is wrong with me?" so much lately that it has become my default mantra.

Now, though, I've found my country. While I like to believe that I am unique beyond all comprehension a piece of me is forever searching, not unlike the ugly duckling of yore, for my people. My kind. Those who do yoga in an attempt to straighten their spines, bent from the weight of heavy school and credit card debt. Those who buy organic when it's on sale because holyspeghettisquash! it sure is expensive to buy things that haven't been doused in chemicals or had their genetic make-up miessed with by over-all clad Dr. Frankensteins. These are the people whoe are either too afraid to know how low their checking accounts are, or know, but pretend it isn't so. They are addicted to craigslist, in search of new apartment, used furniture, new friends and, if possible, a new LIFE. They work for the wealthy - doing things you wouldn't inflict on terrorist suspects - and they work for non-profits - doing things you wouldn't inflict on terrorist suspects - all for amounts that add up to less than the cost of one year of their college education.

You read about these folks who, having given away everything they own so that they could travel through the world untethered, walk across this great nation, back and forth from one coast to the other like Forest Gump, only to end up endorsing Nike as they walk, and eventually taking over as Vice President of Marketing. All of which leads to a life AFTER the mortgage.

I am one of the people who "fell" into a profession doing...research? Where did my childhood dream disappear to - the one that moved me to ask for a typewriter for Christmas at the age of ten or led me to create one of the juiciest junior high journals one could read? Why am I not writing?

How did I end up so paralyzed when my parents helped me achieve so much. I was never told, like they were, that I wasn't good enough. Quite the opposite. I was told I could have, be, do, get, reach for, achieve anything in the world if I worked for it. Yet, I fell unworthy of getting it. I work hard and stop just short of asking for what I want.

Maybe humans are designed with a natural desire to start at the bottom and work our way up. If we were raised in comfort by understanding parents who wanted the best for us, maybe, just maybe, some of us have to bring ourselves down, down, down to the very bottom so that we can find our own way back up. So that we, like our hallowed ancestors, can forge our own paths.

My path may not lead to a mortgage. I may be 56 years old and still associating myself with those in their twenties who mostly make up this demographic. Even now, at 31, I'm pushing it. I may claim these as my people, but in a few years I may be too old for them to claim me. And maybe that will motivate me to stop resting within the confines of definitions created by others (Gen X, SWF, BTM) and finally define myself. Maybe then I can crossover into adulthood and stop haunting youth culture, with or without a mortgage.