When I was about twelve or thirteen, around the time that puberty sunk its oily claws into me, I became obsessed with staying a kid.

Perhaps this was only a normal reaction to the changes I was seeing in my body and the way that others perceived it. I had gone from a skinny kid to a girl who now had hips littered with stretchmarks from their rapid growth, and my burgeoning hips and breasts meant that several grown men had now catcalled me or tried to talk to me. Perhaps it was fear at the idea of becoming burdened with the things that had stressed my mother—and by extension, me—my whole childhood. Bills and jobs and duties outside of just going to school, waiting at the library for Mom to pick me up, and coming home. Perhaps it was because this was around the time that my great, great grandmother, who had always seemed so solid and strong to me, began to lose her mind to dementia, and I became acutely aware of the passage of time. Perhaps most likely, it was the fact that I had never felt like a kid to begin with, and I was outraged at the idea that I would have to enter adulthood without ever having been given a proper childhood. 

For whatever reason, fear gripped me, and I became obsessed with all things Peter Pan. I read the original J.M. Barrie book, enthralled by the intensity and grittiness of the world. I watched the movies compulsively, both the original, wildly racist 1953 Disney version, and more often, the 2003 version, which was also undoubtedly one of my first sexual awakenings. I found myself wanting to pause time. Praying for Peter Pan to come and rescue me, lead me to his promised Neverland and away from the loss of my childhood. I wrote journal entries to him. I dreamt of the adventures that we could have together, if only he was real. I lamented the fact that he would never come with a grief so real, I almost came to believe that the character wasn’t quite fictional, that some part of my mind had wanted him to be real, and so it was. 

Now, I look around, and I find that without even meaning to, I have grown up. Last week, I moved to a new city for a new job. Somewhere in the hills above Sacramento, an area that I had never explored or dreamed of living in before, but is picturesque and idyllic beyond my wildest dreams. I packed up my SUV with things from my brief time spent at my grandpa’s house, working three dead-end part-time jobs at once, adding miles to my car as I commuted to the Sacramento area for all of them, and I picked up the rest of my stuff from my storage in West Sacramento. I spent the four days before my start date furiously moving. Unpacking became my life’s blood, as I spent my days putting together my one-bedroom apartment.

I spent those days in the moving haze that I’ve become intimately familiar with throughout my life, my singular focus blocking everything else out. Only in those early hours in the morning, or late at night did I even begin to process the rapid changes taking place in my life. The first few nights at this place, it felt like I was sleeping in a stranger’s bed. Each morning, I’d wake up with the sheets stuck to me, body slick with sweat, and feel as though I’d been dropped into someone else’s dream. Each night, I fell asleep with the certainty that this life that had somehow miraculously become mine, could fall away with the opening of my eyes the next morning, and I’d be back to applying to twenty jobs a week, begging anyone to hire me. 

This whole life that I’ve cultivated in this short week, that I’ve dreamed of and worked so hard to achieve, feels so temporary. There is an existential dread to it all. I’ve graduated. I’ve gotten a full-time job with benefits. Now what? What’s next? Who am I without the permanence of struggle? Then there is the imposter syndrome. The feeling that I am in the wrong place, the wrong house, living the wrong life. That this was all meant for someone who was not me. That I don’t deserve it, and I may lose it at any moment, if I do not grip it tight in my fist. When I was dreading growing up at twelve, these are not the fears that I anticipated in adulthood. I thought that once I achieved a good job and a stable living situation, I would feel good. But I am so used to the impermanence of everything. So used to moving every year or two, planning to be out of somewhere and onto the next thing soon. I am not used to building roots. I’m not even sure that I know how to plant them. 

But I am trying to learn. Here, among the foothills and mountains, I am planting seeds. I am getting up at 6:30 am for work. I am doing the best that I possibly can at my job, giving everything my all. I am coming home and making myself dinner. I am living my boring, adult life, and on the weekends, I am cultivating joy. I am wandering the walking path near my apartment. I am finding new places to eat. I am meeting with a friend in the area for coffee. Most importantly, I am still striving. I am querying agents, and I am revising work, and I am writing new things, even if they are just journal entries that no one will ever see. This is my life’s work; this is my devotion. This is the only pact that I have ever made and stuck to; this one to continue to write, even when it’s hard.

Perhaps these are the only seeds that I know how to plant right now. The moving of fingers across a keyboard. The emails to agents. The scribbles in my Kiki’s Delivery Service journal. Perhaps a separate part of my life’s work is to find out how to plant these seeds outside of my writing. How to make another pact with myself and stick with it. Perhaps I will make the hardest pact of all; the pact to stay, even when leaving is what is in my blood. The pact to settle. The pact to accept where I am, to welcome it with open arms. The pact to just be. 

I think that I’m still a little afraid of growing up. I still sometimes wish some mystical creature would come and rescue me from the drudgery of day-to-day life, taking me on wild and glorious adventures. But there is no creature. There is no Peter Pan. There is just me, and this new life in this new town with this new job, and always, my writing. And perhaps that, to paraphrase Pan himself, is the greatest adventure of all.