The Age of ?

When did 28 become the new 18? In my short travels through there have always been certain ages that marked accomplishments, a sort of checkpoint in the travels to adulthood. At sixteen we learn to drive and get a license, some people even get a car resulting in at least a small amount of freedom from your parental units. At 18, you graduate high school and head off into the world of college, adulthood, etc. You begin to learn how to subsist on your own. The decisions that you are faced with are yours and yours alone to make with very little input from your parents.

As you continue to age, these 'checkpoints' release more and more of the freedoms that were once totally controlled and held by your parents. You get to drink, date, make your own money and in my case spend it.

So when did all of the sudden, the transition into adulthood get moved back a decade? When I was 18 I struck off on my own to a new city to make new friends and forge a new life. Sure it was mostly financed by my parents, bless their overspent hearts, but it was still my life. I was learning and growing, making the decisions that would later form me into the man that I have now become. My mother especially was always there to try and help guide me in the best possible way but at some point she let go and began to let me do me.

I have noticed the trend in my generation in which all kinds of responsibility; emotional, financial, and the like are no longer being looked upon in the late teens early twenties era but more in the late twenties to early thirties era. In previous generations, i.e. that of both of my brothers they were individual and forced to face the realities of adulthood at around 21 or 22. Well, lets say for ONE of my brothers. Nate was married and expecting a baby when he was 25. He had a family to support, had settled down with one woman, had a steady well paying ADULT job and was a man.

I think that a lot of this may have to do with the gay community in general. To understand the psyche of a gay person in todays world you have to understand that for the most part, we were suppressed for years and years. Unable to be the people that we really wanted to be, we become somewhat developmentally retarded. It is a common practice for gay men, I know, (lesbians lemme know if this is true for you as well) to go through the party/slut period. This is the time in which apparently we must make up for all those years of going out and being seen and being able to sexually express ourselves that we missed by conforming to societies view of what the 'norm' is thought to be. (I know I shouldn't end a sentence in a preposition but its midnight and I can't think that hard right now)

It is then made to be okay by everyone around us that at 23 or 24 we are partying all the time, having copious amounts of sex with random strangers that we meet in a bar or on the internet, and in general having a total void of emotionally responsibility to ourselves let alone the people that are in our lives. Me first, I will deal with you later. We numb ourselves and our emotions by fililng our body with drugs, alcohol, and countless other toxins that all perform the same function, to help us escape from the emotional hell that we place ourselves in each and every day.

My question is this, how does a 24 year old gay man living in a city like Dallas accept the fact that instead of numbing himself (for too long) he listened to the generations before him and somewhere along the way grew a heart and a conscience?