Nostalgia You never really think of yourself as ‘grown up’. You just aren&rs

Nostalgia You never really think of yourself as ‘grown up’. You just aren’t, and then you are, a subtle change in temperament and bearing that occurs without you even noticing. One day you’re in the process, the next you’re done, growing completed, please step out of the incubation chamber and into the world, if you will.  The thing was, she’d thought of herself that way. She just didn't realise that’s how she’d thought of herself until that preconception was annihilated, ground into nothing by a few short words. She hadn’t realised quite how much of herself was invested in that singular fact until the rug had been removed from under her.  Drinks after work, new job, new suit, new shoes. Laughing with co-workers who she couldn’t help but see as competition, simultaneously rungs on a ladder for her to use to help climb skyward, and other climbers, grabbing at her heels, ready to use her shoulders as a boost if they could get the foothold. The conversation, then, was safe. More than safe, it was inane. Easy targets dispatched with a cruel efficiency. General topics discussed with an exhausting detail. You needed the drink just to dull the words, let them slip back and forth, through your ears and out your mouth.  He’d cut through the conversation like a selfish driver, approaching her directly, interrupting her mid-flow so that she’d been stumped, left feeling as though it was her that was rude, that she’d somehow disappointed.  “What are you drinking?” Innocuous enough, if you took the words devoid of tone. But he hadn’t offered them that way, lacing each syllable with subtext, making it sound less like a request and more like an imperative. She felt compelled. She felt.. small.  And now, here she was. Separated from the safety of colleagues. Pulled away from her confidence, her will power, every last bit of control she’d accrued over the past six or seven years, since she’d stopped being driven by childish impulse and started becoming an adult. She felt… adrift. She glanced at herself in the mirror and saw a girl. She wasn’t sure what she had expected. A woman, probably.  The toilet flushed and a few moments later he walked back into the room, rolling the sleeves of his shirt into perfect folds. She watched the muscles of his forearms writhe, and impulsively bit her bottom lip.  “Well aren’t you adorable.” He muttered under his breath. Fiddlesticks. -- source link

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