"I don't know how you do it," my friend Sarah Jo often says to me when we're talking careers. "This is why I ask you for advice on these things!" This is after I've posted another accomplishment to social media: curating social media for Bustle, published in Cosmopolitan, accepted to my dream graduate program, became an editor for a global women’s college magazine, had several of my published essays go viral.
When I hear that people are applauding me or, worse, seeking advice, I want to laugh and cry at the same time. Don't they realize I have no idea what I'm doing? I'm just a 15-year-old girl trapped inside a 22-year-old body, wondering why nobody is signed in to AIM anymore.
As someone in my early 20s, I know it well: that dual feeling of wondering, "Why am I not yet the CEO of my own successful startup, or a powerful businessperson with a corner office, or a bestselling author?" and at the same time, thinking, "I can't be responsible for paying my own bills and cooking. How do I even turn the oven off?"
I'm trapped in this mess of a life stage. My mind aches to skip it, all the pain of wondering if every little misstep is a catastrophic disaster, all the jealousy of watching those around me grow up faster and more successful, all the pressure of listening to older adults around me showering me with praise for everything I've done.
The best day of my life was when I found out I'd made it into a BuzzFeed article. The same day, I was also offered a job. Is this what it means to be an adult, to be more excited about my Hermione Granger graduation cap being seen by thousands than about my career in editing taking off?
Being 22 is a lie. I live in my own apartment with my girlfriend, two cats, and one hamster. If I don't pay the bills, I'm homeless. If I don't wake up in the morning for work, I'm fired. If I don't clean my cats' litter box, they pee on the couch. My friends and family say I should be self-assured and confident, because I've done more than other people at my age.
They don't understand that I’m a teenage actor playing the part of an adult. Someone off-screen directs me to go grocery shopping, so I play the part. I make the list, I select the items, and I go home and put them away. But it’s not really me, is it? There’s a 15-year-old girl in me that’s watching her dad put away the steak he just bought. She’s sitting at her computer desk typing away to her friends, not noticing whether or not it makes sense to open the package, individually wrap the steaks in aluminum foil and freeze the ones that I’m not planning to use yet. So the leftover steaks rot. Is this what it means to be an adult?
I’m watching myself as I move through life, as if from afar, hoping that the person in control is making the right decisions. My father’s 55, and I’m in the beginning stages of becoming responsible for his care as he ages. As his only child, I have to ask myself hard questions. Should he move into a community for older people? Does he need home health care? Do I need to make sure he takes his medications? At my age, he was working more than 70 hours a week, barely sleeping in between shifts because he was that dedicated. As I make believe that I’m growing older, he actually is. And I ask again: is this what it means to be an adult?
After seven years with my girlfriend, I’m frozen on the concept of the two of us as high school hallway sweethearts, trading notes by our lockers and meeting in between classes for a quick kiss. Instead, we have all these weathered years between us, as each of us watched part of our dreams die, and molded into entirely new people. On the couch after work, I ask her if she wants to watch Netflix again for the third time this week. I can’t move beyond the image of the two of us at 17, with a television show in the background, barely able to keep our hands off each other. We were filled with wild fantasies of becoming published authors and working in book publishing. It was all we could talk about. As the years passed, we stripped off layers of ourselves in order to become adults. Choose a realistic path. Prioritize studying, and finding a job that pays the bills. At 22, I thought I’d be waking up every morning to the career that made me lose sleep out of excitement as a teenager. I didn’t think I would burn Pop Tarts in the middle of the night, set off the fire alarm and wake my startled girlfriend in the process. I think I’m starting to understand: this is what it means to be an adult.
Snippets of the 15-year-old me come popping back out. She’s the one reminding me that, no, my friend on Facebook does not have it all together. Just because she’s smiling in pictures with her colleagues doesn’t mean her job is perfect, even if she does #ILoveMyJob. Just because she and her husband own a house and have a young baby doesn’t mean they don’t spend hours bickering over whose turn it is to change the diaper. The 15-year-old reminds me that it isn’t over yet. I’m not a bestselling published author, and I’m not an editor at a top publishing house. Some of my goals have changed, and so have I, and that’s perfectly OK. I’m still dreaming. The dream isn’t over; it’s actually just beginning. And I have a lot to be excited about—after all, I was featured in BuzzFeed. This is what it means to be an adult.
