Accepting the reality of adulthood

Growing up is hard pill to swallow.

Lately I’ve been finding myself wishing someone else was in charge. Someone who knows what to do about a parent’s fading memory, or a kid’s underdeveloped social skills. Someone who knows what kind of life insurance to get, or how much protein I’m supposed to be eating. I wish there were a growner grown-up around to talk me through all the things I have to figure out at this stage of my life.

Sometimes I’ll hear myself discussing parenting approaches or reminding someone why it’s important to floss their teeth and I’m astounded at who I’ve become. I used to fall asleep without a care in the world. Now, I double-check to make sure my phone ringer is on because I’m someone’s emergency contact. The harrowing truth is: I am the grown-up. I’m the one who’s supposed to know what to do. I’m the one people call when something goes wrong.

I don’t know exactly when it happened. There was no ritual, no rite-of-passage ceremony. No one handed me a manual at the end of my childhood and said, here’s how to be a person in the world now. No one tells you that you’ll wake up one day and suddenly, the people you once leaned on will start leaning back on you.

This stage of life feels strange. I’m stretched between two realities: tending to the ones who raised me and raising children myself. I’m trying to make peace with a body that doesn’t function the way it used to. I’ve given up self-detrimental ambition, but I’m not sure where to go from here. I’m still trying to figure out how to simply live well.

I wish they had taught us in school what to do to become a happy person. Instead, our formal education was focused on how to be an employable person. I resent this.

I wish I had a mentor for adulthood. I’m not ashamed to admit that I need someone to hold my hand through it all. It’s wild and terrifying to be charting my own path with no one to come behind me and make sure I’m headed in the right direction.

When I was little, I wanted so badly to be grown. I wanted to be able to eat what I wanted, do what I wanted and go where I wanted, without anyone restricting my moves. I envisioned adulthood as the fulfillment of all my heart’s desires.

It turns out, adulthood isn’t as great as I thought it would be. The highlight reel has been replaced by the unremarkableness of the everyday. I plant veggies in the garden and check them like they’re newborns. I write. I watch American Idol on the couch next to my fiancé, surprisingly content with my simple, ordinary life.

Younger me was so mediocrity-averse, doing everything I could to live a life that felt like a fantasy. Current me? She basks in the glory of a regulated nervous system — grateful for the gifts of ease and predictability. My life now is defined by my ability to say this matters to me and that doesn’t, with a clarity that comes from having survived what didn't kill me.

This life of responsibility and simplicity feels nothing like the feral freedom I imagined for myself. Some days, I find myself missing the chaos of my early twenties. I miss the spontaneity — the freedom of having no idea what I was doing and doing it anyway. There was a wildness to that time. A kind of liberating recklessness. I was driven only by pleasure and the thrill of adventure. I was relentless in my pursuit of wealth, success, and purpose. I didn’t have to think about anyone else but me.

But now? Now I just want to get enough REM sleep to not need coffee at 3PM, keep up with my close friends and spend quality time with my family.

Certainty feels so much better than chaos. Being leaned on feels better than living alone.

There was a point in my life when excitement was the only way I could feel alive. Now, I feel alive when I notice that a tiny cucumber has sprouted in the garden. I feel alive when I hear the children laugh. I feel alive when I’m understood without having to explain myself.

I’m writing the manual I wish someone had given to me. I’m learning to carry responsibility without letting it crush me, to find peace in routine, and to make space for small joys in the midst of all the obligations. Being a grown-up is rarely glamorous, often tiring, and rewarding in ways younger me couldn't have fathomed.

I wonder how life will feel as I get older — if the feeling of being a kid in an adult’s body will ever go away. I wonder what thrills I’ll have in my fifties and sixties. I’m looking forward to being the growner grown-up in the room. I imagine I’ll still feel like life is a great mystery, but I’ll have more wisdom, more clarity, and a bigger garden.

With so much love,
Jamila