Growing up

It has been good to meet up with various friends recently.  We have had a lot to catch up on, but end up looking back at the times when we lived in the same place - and whether that was 5 or 15 years ago it is a reminder how much time passes when you are not looking.

My friends seem to have grown up, dealing with teenagers, settling down, having families and that is just those around my age.  They all seem so grown up and responsible whilst I am having duvet days and not managing to feed myself properly without reminders on my phone. I don't feel very grown up a lot of the time.  And yet if I were to look at my life from the outside I would think differently - I have a role as a church minister, and even if I say so myself I have done more than tread water in that role.  I may do that around my duvet times, and too often relying on winging things than hours of deep study, but what is needed gets done.  The other week someone even called me an inspiration!

Home alone you don't notice time passing as much as when there are children around growing through clothes and school years. After a fairly peripatetic life from 18 until I landed here I got used to dating events by where I was living at the time - it must have been in 2006 that X happened because I was in North Wales then....

The years that I have been here in one place and one role all merge together in my appalling memory, so I have not really noticed how much time has passed. But soon it will be time to go through the process to prepare to move on. I am also looking back at patterns of my depressions and other moods since the Big Crash at minister training college and even before - I have an appointment with a psychiatrist in a few weeks in a search for something that will tackle the resistant lows.

It all reminds me that I am in my 5th yr here and am 6 and half yrs since the Crash - and whether fully grown up or not I have certainly done a lot of growing in that time.