So I’m an adult. I live in an apartment with three other young women. It’s great. I love it. However, sometimes scary things happen.
There was a spider in the bathroom.
The spider was big.
Really big.
REALLY.
BIG.
And I was the only one home.
Now there is something you should know about me: I hate spiders with a fiery burning passion. They also terrify me. Even so, I wasn’t about to leave and go to class without first making sure the spider received its due punishment for existing and sitting in the corner of our bathroom.
At this point, most logical adults would have probably grabbed a shoe or paper towel to calmly squish the arachnid into oblivion.
I, however, grabbed a bottle of dish soap, three shoes, a cup and a bowl. You know, just to be prepared.
According to Google, dish soap kills spiders. And I know this because I've thoroughly googled every method of killing spiders known to man. After frantically saturating the spider with blue Dawn liquid soap, I plopped the bowl on top of the dying creature and prayed Google was right. It was. Thank goodness.
I frantically Snapchatted all my apartment mates to warn them of the (hopefully deceased) menace:
Naturally, this episode was followed by my sitting on the bathroom floor laughing for five minutes. I felt very powerful, though not very adultish. You see, I’m technically an adult, yet I fear I have a long way to go before I achieve the sufficient amount of fearlessness necessary to 1) calmly kill spiders and 2) be a full-fledged adult.
Or maybe adults are allowed to be scared of spiders. I actually don’t think there are rules for being an adult other than you have to be over 18. We millennials like to talk about adulting. Well, I adulted today! Does that make me an adult?
I don’t think so.
A single action we perform doesn’t define our maturity, personality or capability. Adulting isn’t something we do at sometimes and not at others. It’s not like the microwave: on for 30 seconds and then done for the day. Being an adult is simply a fact. Sometimes we live up to that fact more than other times. But it’s an innate part of who we are. It’s not a choice we make or an act we perform.
Sure, sometimes I still call my mom to ask her what I should do when I have a cold. But that doesn’t mean I’m not an adult; it just means I’m a sick adult.
Basically what I’m trying to say is that you can still be yourself and feel like an adult. You don’t need to put yourself on the back burner to “adult.” Adults are allowed to have childish hopes and crazy, wild dreams. Adults are allowed to make mistakes. Adults are allowed to ask older adults for advice.
And adults are allowed to be scared of spiders.
So stop trying to "adult." "Adulting" doesn’t exist. You are you, and you are an adult. So work on being the best you that you can be, and know you’re an adult you can be proud of.
