How to Grow Up Read Online Free PDF Page A

a
crack
it startled me. How the bunch of them blotted the sun, stippled it like a strobe light with the flap of their wings. I brought it around to my sobriety, how I used to have panic attacks, but they went away.
    â€œThat’s why I wanted to talk to you,” Christopher said. “You’re so calm.”
    Stop everything. “Me?” I asked, incredulous. “You think I’m a calm person?” I didn’t want to make his panic attack all about me, but this was wild. An ex of mine once told me she’d avoided being my friend, let alone dating me, for months, because she was sure I was a speed freak. This was during my early, innocent days in San Francisco, before I had even heard of crystal meth. I was not a calm person. I talked fast, and constantly. I was riled up. I had opinions. They were important. They were probably moreimportant than yours, and I would argue with you forever, just to be sure.
    â€œYes, you are so calm,” Christopher insisted, kindly taking a moment from his panic attack to flatter me. In 12-step they tell you that the best thing to do when you are in psychological pain is to focus on something other than yourself, so perhaps I was doing Christopher a favor by directing the conversation toward me.
    â€œAren’t I talking all the time?”
I prodded. “Aren’t I so loud?”
    Christopher thought about it, and shrugged. “No, you’re not. You’re really calm, and you have your shit together. You’re sober, you’re a published writer, you’re . . . healthy.”
    Perhaps compared to a newly sober baby drag queen in the grip of a panic attack, I did have all my shit together. Such assessments are relative. But what really struck me was that compared to
myself
at any other point in my life, I really
did
have all my shit together. When it’s hard for you to grow up—because you’re poor and can’t afford the trinkets and milestones of adulthood, or you’re gay and the mating rites of passage don’t seem to apply to you, or you are sensitive to the world’s injustices and decided long ago that if being a grown-up means being an asshole you’ll carry out your days in Neverland with the rest of the Lost Children, thank you very much—when adulthood seems somehow off-limits to you, growing up takes time. You have to want it, and then you have to make a lot of changes. Some changes you make consciously and some without knowing it, and some changes get made for you. It’s so much work I forgot I was even engaged in it; it just became
life
.
    Sometimes you’re so caught in old ideas about yourself, ittakes another person to show you who you actually are today. And the person you are today is a lot more grown-up than last time you checked.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    About a month after Christopher’s panic attack, the day before Thanksgiving, I was preparing two dishes to bring to a dinner. The first dish was sort of a joke, sort of not—broccoli Velveeta casserole. It’s a joke because anything with Velveeta in it is a joke. It’s not a joke because anything with Velveeta in it is delicious. I call it my heirloom recipe, but the truth is my mom started making it after I was grown and had moved out of her house. Still, it’s
emotionally
my heirloom recipe. To make it, you steam a bunch of broccoli, or, if you’re really aiming for authenticity, buy it frozen and nuke it in the microwave. Spread it across a casserole dish. Cut thick slabs from your surprisingly expensive loaf of Velveeta, and layer it over the broccoli. When the broccoli is obscured, take a sleeve of Ritz crackers and crumble them in your hands. Scatter them over the Velveeta. Next, melt some butter. How much butter? According to my mother, just enough to wet the crackers. Or, in the accent of our homeland, the North Shore of Boston, “Just anough ta wet tha crackahs.” Once