17 Mar Attempting Adulthood in America

‘You OK?’ The cashier at the supermarket asks me. I look up from studying my stumpy nails, smile and respond with; ‘Isn’t that the million-dollar question?’. He laughs, shrugs and mutters something along the lines of ‘Yeah, I guess’. In hindsight, he had every reason to ask, what with me having found myself doing a food shop that comprised of an aubergine, cereal and hand soap at 8am on a Sunday morning. I am in last night’s make-up (that was not exactly stellar upon first application and has not improved throughout the night), dressed in my blue-checked pyjama bottoms and a white top with a pink cat on it that says ‘Adult’. The irony is not lost on me. I’m pretty sure the t-shirt isn’t convincing anyone at this point.

It is the weekend before Spring Break, and I have been ready for the break for months. The weather has been volatile, and my mental state similarly erratic. In an effort to retain some balance I found a life drawing class held at the SF Art Institute for a few hours on a Friday night. I picked up some materials on the way, and ended up having a forty-minute conversation with the cashier at the art shop about the ability of certain grains of paper to hold charcoal. This was as mind-numbingly boring as it sounds, but it succeeded in making me feel saner and more grounded than I have felt in the last few non-stop weeks. Turns out, discussing GSM (Grams per Square Meter) does for me what gardening or a long bath does for other people. The life drawing class was amazing too. It was so good to sit and draw for a while– interspersed with a continuous stream of text messages from my roommate about her sorority’s party that weekend. Other than that, I finished the session in a fairly peaceful state of mind, a state of mind that dissipated pretty quickly after realizing I’d misplaced my clipper card and would have to walk home in the rain with only my drawings as protection against the elements (for anyone wondering, the 80 gsm newsprint paper is not advertised for its waterproofing ability, and rightly so). Though I’m pleased to report the drawings could only have been improved by this.

I got home to the discovery of my housemates having thrown a party, which is not unusual, but also not what the drowned rat version of me was expecting when walking through the broken front door that evening. The weekend from this point onwards is kind of a blur of events which lack any comprehensible chronology in my head, though it’s safe to say the fleeting sense of calm was successfully demolished. I remember someone licking a hamster (like almost swallowing it), I remember discovering mint chocolate chip cookie flavor Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, I remember acquiring and walking home with a red solo cup of macaroni and cheese, and that I did end up at this sorority party. To clarify, my roommate’s sorority are this wonderful American Latina group, they’re really warm and bubbly, and they also throw a great party. It is, however abundantly clear that I am not one of these warm, bubbly American Latina women. They are all best friends, that dance and make everything look effortless and I am kind of just there, in awkward awe. This could sound like the beginning of a heart-warming, coming-of-age feature length film, if I wasn’t the heroine. But for this scenario, I am. Picture the aunt that thinks she’s a lot more fun than she actually is at family events. The one who wants to hear about boyfriends, girlfriends, the cool bands of the moment and what ‘the kids’ are still into these days, plus she’s British. That aunt is me at these sorority events. My housemates and other friends seem to find this pretty funny, and it is, I think the only ones who are still little confused by the fact that I continue to turn up to their events are the sorority themselves.

As this weekend will testify to, and as almost anyone will tell you, my memory is appalling. But even I find myself a little concerned with how I am going to remember this weird and wonderful stint I had in America when I was nineteen. Even living it feels like a bizarre, indistinct dream. Maybe it’s the fog, which has been particularly bad over the last few days, but I can’t seem to pinpoint events, even as they happen. This haze of happenings that is dotted with intense California sunshine, torrential rain and a subsequent string of awful hair days.

That cashier’s ‘You OK?’ rings in my ears on the treacherous twenty-minute walk home. Treacherous in the sense that my out-of-shape lungs take on a stupidly steep hill. A face-off said lungs never enter into willingly, and I always swear will never do so again–until I find myself without toilet paper and realize it lies at the shop over the hill. I mull it over properly. I wonder if that guy that licked the hamster is still coughing up hairballs, I look forward to seeing the state of my housemates and any remaining stragglers from the night before when I get in, I avoid looking at the height of my hair as I see the frizz creeping into my peripheral vision, and I meditate on the sheer amount of schoolwork I have left until the last minute. I decide I could certainly be doing worse. I mean, I could certainly be doing better as well, but where’s the thrill in that?