Cold Feet

I've been sort of a mess lately, I won't lie. The real world has been coming unusually hard and I just haven't been prepared for it. As you might have gathered from my last post, a big part of the problem is my location, and corresponding job, hunt. I'd like to shift today's focus to something else though. An even bigger marker on the highway to adulthood.

Precisely a month from today, my best friend since the sixth grade is tying the knot with his college sweetheart. I will be there, beside him, as a groomsman. And I'm sort of up in the air about the whole thing.

Don't get me wrong, I couldn't be happier for them. From the start, they were one of those indestructible couples that everyone hates for having settled forever at such a young age. The two of them couldn't be more right. They have jobs, an apartment, a dog. I'm sure they'll have beautiful kids too. But something still troubles me. No, troubles is too soft a word; let's go with terrifies. Something still terrifies me. And I guess that feeling boils down to the following.

Are we really this freaking old?

How is it even possible that we went from shooting bottle rockets at each other to grown-up in just over a year? Shouldn't there be some kind of transition period?

Spookier yet, I'm a tiny bit jealous. Not to the point of being ready to settle down--as if there were even blips on the radar--but jealous enough to worry. I mean, I'm the guy who honestly thought marriage was something best left in the post-thirty range. Why am I suddenly so amiable toward it?

Sometimes I feel like life is living me. So long as it leads me to happiness, I guess I'm ok with that. Also, it's probably good that I'm having my mini-crisis a month before the wedding - I'd sure hate to, you know, pass out during the ceremony. I should be well-braced by August.

Not to mention, I'll have the best date a guy could ask for on my arm. She's another one, a friend, who has touched the last decade of my life more than she will probably ever know. We've met a handful of life's big transitions together already, and I'm genuinely thankful she's still at my side.

So again, here's to tomorrow.