Okay, I'm tired of being an adult now.

I'll go back home and stop pretending now.

I'm tired of the responsibilities, the bills, the expectations, the disappointments, the losses, the fears, the anxieties, the risks, the dangers, the further expectations, the follow-up expectations and the resulting disappointment.

Whether it's as simple as getting (another) bill in the mailbox, realizing that you haven't yet made the phone call to Sallie Mae or being paranoid, laying in bed at night asking yourself through half-consciousness if you remembered to set your alarm so you don't show up late for rehearsal. Because after all, you can sound like crap in rehearsal, but if you show up late, that'd be a problem. Or gritting your teeth every time a credit score commercial comes on the TV or radio and makes you afraid that you'll never qualify for that $4.5 million dollar home loan for the modest 2 bedroom rambler you've had your eye on.
And if that weren't enough, you have to worry about your rate of hair loss, what your friends and (even worse) strangers think about your 'unique' hair patterns, what you smell like, whether or not the clothes you cover your lumpy pasty white body with are clean, whether or not you could afford to put 1/4 tank of gas in the car this week, if you remembered to write down that last purchase in your checkbook register, turn off the oven and feed the goldfish.
Or, you could try struggling with the impending doom of personal failure - sensing that you've not accomplished what you wanted/are capable of and now you're in a place where there's no option for you to change course.
Adults are weird. They say one thing, and mean another. The sooner you learn this subtle language of subtext the better you'll do. But don't try and keep a young kid around to translate for, because it only points out how stupid and redundant your lifestyle is. In the effort to not offend or confront, we complicate things on average 147% more, requiring an addition .5 amount of effort to accomplish anything at all.

Yes, despite all of the amazing wonderful freedoms adult brings, I'll exchange it at the counter for the chance to go back to scarfing macaroni and cheese for lunch, cramming an afternoon of imaginary war against the trees in the backyard and spending 5 hours laying my stomach, building the world's unseen wonders out of Legos.

I'll gladly even set fire to most of my possessions, if it'll help you out.

T.