WHY WERE WE SO EAGER TO GROW UP?
An Investigation Into a Decision I Would Like to Revisit
Why were we so eager to grow up?
I mean...
Really?
We couldn't wait.
We wanted to stay up late.
Drive cars.
Make our own decisions.
Go wherever we wanted.
Have our own money.
Have our own place.
Nobody could tell us what to do.
Freedom.
It sounded incredible.
And, to be fair, there are some pretty great things about being an adult.
I can make my own decisions.
I can change my life.
I can move across the country.
I can eat cake for dinner if I want to.
There is technically no one to stop me.
Which brings me to the part nobody explained.
You are responsible for everything.
The appointments.
The car.
The house.
The career.
The paperwork.
The passwords.
So many passwords.
The things you forgot to do.
The things you don't know how to do.
And the things you didn't even know were things you were supposed to know how to do.
Sometimes I find myself screaming,
“I NEED AN ADULT!”
...
And then I remember.
I'm the adult.
Fuck.
There are moments when I genuinely miss the feeling that someone else knows what they're doing.
Because adulthood is a lot of standing in the middle of a situation thinking,
Surely someone is going to come explain this to me.
And then realizing no one is coming.
So you Google it.
You figure it out.
You make the best decision you can.
And you keep moving.
Because that's apparently what growing up actually is.
Not suddenly becoming wise.
Not having everything figured out.
Just becoming the person who can say,
“Okay. I'll handle it.”
Even when you're thinking,
“I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.”
And maybe that's the part I didn't understand when I was thirteen.
I thought growing up meant becoming completely independent.
I didn't realize you could be independent and still occasionally want someone to tell you what the hell is going on.
I didn't know the world would change so much.
I didn't know how much we'd have to adapt.
I didn't know how much responsibility could sit on one person's shoulders.
I definitely didn't know that sometimes you can be completely capable and still feel completely overwhelmed.
But here's the thing.
When I was thirteen, I had a picture in my head of what I wanted my life to feel like.
I wanted adventure.
I wanted freedom.
I wanted to see things.
I wanted to make my own choices.
I wanted to live somewhere beautiful.
I wanted a life that felt like mine.
And somehow...
I'm living it.
Not exactly the way thirteen-year-old me imagined.
Better in some ways.
Messier in others.
Definitely with more passwords.
But I'm in California.
I'm building a life of my own.
I'm making choices for myself.
I'm still curious.
I'm still getting myself into a little trouble.
I'm still figuring shit out.
And maybe that's the funny part.
We spend so much of our childhood wanting to become the person we are now…
only to become that person and realize:
Oh.
She still has no idea what she's doing.
And that's okay.
Because maybe growing up was never about finally having all the answers.
Maybe it was about becoming someone who can keep asking questions -
and keep going anyway.
Still…
I'd like to have a word with whoever sold thirteen-year-old me on this whole “being an adult” thing.
Because the marketing was misleading.