The other night I had a dinner party- I invited over my eight closest friends from uni and cooked for them and fed them wine. I'm determined to stay close to them in our post-uni lives because I will never be that person who only has friends from their current venture. I think it's really important to have old friends because they can't replaced. Old friends have lived through your experiences with you, they know you in a way new friends can't. new friends may eventually become old friends but when you lose an old friend you lose so many memories. Besides that, I don't know if I'm going to follow a career in the law and I need friends who know that side of me. My university friends are typical law students- ridiculous A-type personalities who are loud and stubborn, who can't ask for help and will argue about anything. For hours. I make them all sound like stereotypes and exactly the same, which isn't true. One of my uni friends is the ultimate idealistic guy who believes that politics really can be different and the perfect girl is just around the corner. Another is a practical swing voter who has been with the same guy for three years who she doesn't love but admits 'there's no one better'. Of course, for the most part, those two don't get along.
Anyway, with the exception of two who are still studying, the rest of them graduated with me. Of those who graduated, two are doing further study and the other four have full-time jobs. I usually hang out with them on weekend and it was different spending time with them on a week night when they all had to be at work by 9am the next morning. it struck me how exhausted they all seemed. I would say miserable, but I don't think that's actually true. I know they would be more miserable without work. One guy stayed at my house until 7am because grudgingly leaving and saying he'd best go home and get his suit so he could go straight to work. None of them drank more than 2 glasses of wine and stared pitifully at the empty glass when it was gone.
I guess this is growing up.
It terrifies me. Seeing friends I have shared years of drinking, debauchery, stupid hook-ups, fights, travel and adventures with grow up into adults with jobs and relationships and weekend BBQs. I cannot do that. The idea of me getting up every morning at 7am, changing into a suit and going to work at an office where I never see sunlight makes me stomach churn. But can I actually escape that? Or are growing up and having fun mutually exclusive concepts? I really really hope not. But here i am, about to flee reality and the country because I can't face up to my future so maybe I know deep down that the adventure ends with a career.
I don't want drudgery. I want to wake up each day with a new idea, a new plan. I want to meet new people and see new things and be a new person. I want to learn and laugh and have fun. I'm not ready to grow up. And I can't stand seeing people I love fall down the black hold of adulthood. Even if that's what they want.
