It came to me several Fridays ago that I am now a grown-up. I used to wonder if one day I would just wake up and realize that I was, as of that day, an adult. I wish that had been the case.
Adulthood doesn’t just knock at the door one day and introduce itself; instead it sneaks up on you in bits and pieces. Bills start coming, you work a few crappy summer jobs and you’re ability to eat becomes steadily more dependent on your paycheck, until one day you’re standing in the kitchen, trying to get your landlord on the phone because your house flooded during a College Station monsoon and it hits you like a brick. At least, that’s how it happened to me.
Seriously, where did my childhood go? My most salient memories are of TAKS tests, marching band and awkward junior high dances. I used to live in a world where ice cream was happiness incarnate, now ice cream means my pants don’t fit. The irony is that I’m pretty sure I spent that entire time wishing I was grown up.
Being an adult has quickly lost its charm. Grown-ups have to do what needs to get done no matter how much they don’t want to do it.
Having a cold doesn’t stop the world anymore, there are no sick days.
There are papers to write, meals to prepare and laundry to do regardless of how little sleep you got last night. Adults don’t have the luxury of believing that their parents, or grandparents, or whoever it was you believed in, are superheroes.
I’ve realized that the mystery of being an adult is that there isn’t a script; you just make it up as you go. I’d hoped that when I was a grown-up I would know it all, but I can still look back on last week and see what an idiot I was, and I know in a week I’ll look back on this week in the same way.
On most days, though, when my house hasn’t flooded or I’m not staring down for the third all-nighter in a row, I like making it up as I go.
Grownups can take midnight trips to the beach for no real reason or eat Ramen for a month to afford a concert ticket. My parents aren’t superheroes anymore, but they’re my friends.
As it turns out, being a grown-up doesn’t mean you stop growing, and that’s OK. Even though adulthood isn’t all it was cracked up to be I’m discovering it’s different, but better. I’m not going to spend this part of my life wishing I were somewhere else; after all, the only way to learn is to live.