growing up - and hating it

i've been thinking about this for days already.

you know that time when you realize that most people your age have transitioned into the next phase of their lives and you should probably do too? it's happening to me right now. and i hate it. i really hate it.

earlier this night, in that sardinas ride from buendia to sm north (drat, and i thought i wouldn't be in one since i get out of the office much later than usual nowadays), toots and i came across toti (a certified batang rf cage). he is currently employed in meridian, i think, together with erol (one of my thesismates in college - go cotsgroup!). i told toots that it's unusual now that we see the people we know in the mrt, not in the up-philcoa jeep or in the waiting shed like before. we now see our friends garbed in "serious" clothes (fortunately for us, digi isn't really strict about that so we can be less serious than others) and they are now really mature-looking. i think i even saw a batchmate of mine from high school (i think her name's merryl but i'm not really sure; she's one of those spe-sci peeps) dressed in those typical office-girl attire - skirt, blouse, blazer, extra-pointy pumps. argh! i don't wanna be like that!

i just wanna be a kid.

but it's really hard and not to mention weird to act like a kid when you're 23, right?

after i ate, i remembered the date today. someone's got his or her birthday today, and i'm not sure who it was. i think golds had her birthday this june 3...so it must be guzy. so i called up guzy, just like old times, and i asked her if today's her birthday. i know i'm weird and i just keep forgetting people's birthdays - even those birthdays of people i've known since years ago (and yes, i sometimes do that intentionally too, but not most of the time), but that's me, selective memory loss crap and all that.

guzy and i chatted about whatever's going around us, whatever happened to our friends and batchmates. most of the peeps i've been asking about are already working (aba dapat lang no) or are in their grad studies (joey and guzy included). we also talked about those fun times in fencing and whatever's going on with the team nowadays, etc., etc., etc. majority of the topics we've touched in that short span of chika time we had was mostly about whatever became of us after college - about work, about board exams, about long-lost friends.

hay.

if only we could talk about next week's chemisty exam and how miss mina is making us crazy with that mouse-rabbit icon she keeps drawing on her visual aids, or about how miss hilario would scream paraaaa kangggg tangaaaaa if you don't answer her friggin' question correctly, or at least how we both fumbled in last week's math 17 exams, or maybe how hellish our reg this sem is.

but no, no can do. because we aren't students anymore (well, technically, guzy is still student but generally speaking, you know...). because toots, toti, athan, erol and i, together with the rest of the recently-graduated celmates, aren't gonna be in cel to be tortured by that freak rodrigo anymore, we're not there to listen to doc m's sensible lectures anymore, and we're not going to fry our brains trying to solder our DIE in ece 113 anymore. because we are now out here in the real world, that freakin' stupid scary big bad real world, that sigh inevitable phase in our lives that we have to move on to.

so even if momsie still gives me baon, drives me to the mrt station, pick me up from there and buys my mrt ticket, i cannot deny the fact that i'm slowly, if unwillingly, transitioning into that yuppie phase. i cannot deny the fact that this is where i should be. i cannot stop time, i know that.

in short, i have to grow up and i have to move on. i have to adapt to the environment and be at ease with working - and accepting that fact that i will never be a kid anymore. i never will be and it just makes it harder for me to grow up when i wish that i never would.

shet, peter pan syndrome.