What is adulthood?

      I remember growing up, thinking that I had it all planned out. I remember being in high school and having two teachers get engaged and pregnant weeks apart. I remember thinking how young they were, how perfect their lives must be and that one day, I too would have it all together. My childhood mind kept me thinking that at twenty-four some very grown-up things would be happening. 

     Fast forward to my own twenty-fourth birthday, when I was (thankfully) neither engaged, nor pregnant, having only just met the man who would eventually become my husband. When I turned twenty-four, I thought about those teachers I had back in the day, with their jobs and fiancés and babies on the way, I felt so young compared to them. How come when I reached the same age I hadn’t made any pinnacle life changes? 

     I was still living at home, working daily since I had only attended a community college. All of my friends beginning their careers and I was stagnant. It is hard to feel like an adult while sleeping at home and asking your mom to pack your lunch. But then, I changed jobs. Garrett and I got our own apartment, and we even bought a couch together. Then, we got engaged- one of the true hallmarks of adulthood in my mind. And yet, I was still left with a nagging feeling that I wasn’t really an adult yet. Maybe I just needed to get some more “adult” type things in order, that had to fix everything. I started a 401K, I ordered my first passport, I started paying for my own health insurance. Over the last year or so, I have worked diligently on making these tiny steps—no, more like giant leaps—towards adulthood. The question is, how will I know when I have actually arrived at my “adult” destination. 

    I’m not sure what’s missing from the adulthood puzzle, I have been trying to put it all together in my mind. On the surface, I’m basically a “model grown-up”. I have a steady job, I show up on time (unless Garrett is driving), I pay my taxes and buy (mostly) adult groceries. STILL NOTHING. But then sometimes, when I’ve done a ton of laundry and it’s all piled on the bed waiting to be folded and I am just too tired, I’ll convince Garrett we can push it to the bottom of the bed and deal with it in the morning. As I drift off to sleep, curled into a tiny ball at the top of the bed, I wonder, is this something other grown-ups are doing? Do other grown-ups eat breakfast for dinner? Drink wine straight from the bottle? Do most adults have to reset their password to pay for their car insurance every.single.month because they don’t want to write it down, and at this point they’ve reset it so many times that the only new password they can come up with are gibberish that they have NO HOPE of remembering again in 30 days? 

   Occasionally I’ll start to feel like I am really getting the hang of this adulthood situation. This morning for example, I woke up before 10am, brewed a fresh pot of coffee. Sat in the quiet and began this blog while Garrett snuck in an extra hour of sleep. I sat on the couch, sipping my coffee, I basically felt like June Cleaver. For me, this strikes me as a very grown-up thing to do. But as I sip from the coffee, prepping to take a selfie for my snapchat, I notice the side of my mug which says, “this could be a margarita.” 

      Moments like these—when I fall asleep amongst a pile of clean clothes that I am too lazy to put away; when I sip from my coffee mug emblazoned with a slogan that is decidedly un-adult— I feel like an “adult” imposter. And I wonder if that will always be the case. 

       Maybe the problem isn’t that I’m failing at being a grown-up. Maybe the problem is that I set the “Adulthood” bar a bit too high. I assumed that all these external markers of getting older—job, apartment, spouse— would be accompanied by some massive internal shift, where I’d suddenly become flawlessly responsible and meticulously organized. I thought that I’d learn to seamlessly balance work and play; I thought that managing the never-ending dishes, laundry and bills would become streamline and simple. 

    If anything is less than absolutely perfect, it feels like a failure. The solution isn’t that I need to try to be the “perfect adult”- whatever that even means. The solution is that I need to adjust my expectations of what it means to grow up. I’m a functioning member of society, and in the grand scheme of the adulthood spectrum, I think I’m doing pretty damn well. Having breakfast for dinner and owning a sassy coffee mug doesn’t make me less of an adult, but it does make adulthood way more fun. Balancing greater responsibilities and the demands that come with growing up with surely become slightly easier in time, but I’m starting to let go of the notion that a day will come when it will all fall into place and I’ll manage it all effortlessly. 

     We’re currently living at my sisters house (that is another story, for another blog post), and she seems to really be nailing adulthood. Her husband and herself both have established careers and a beautiful home, a perfect little girl and are living in bicoastal in their 30’s. They don’t seem to be the sort of people who, for example, fall asleep with a pile of clean laundry at the foot of the bed. For holidays they have friends and family over their lovely, clean house for hors d’oeuvres and fancy drinks, and I feel like I might as well be at a costume party, here in my “grown-up” costume where everyone chats about kids and houses. When I need to sneak away I make my way upstairs to the bathroom and find hundreds of princess costumes, bath toys, stuffed animals and baby dolls scattered amongst the hallway. This, I could identify with. Even the most put-together grown-ups I knew have a secret stash of decidedly non-adult messiness lurking in the shadows.

Maybe we’re all adults, just trying to do our best. Maybe we just all arrive at adulthood a little differently, at a different pace. Don’t rush for your “twenty-four” year old dream; don’t be upset when it takes a little longer than expected. Sit back and relax, enjoy your coffee in your margarita mug and fold the laundry another day.