All I have ever wanted to do was grow up and now that I’m growing up all I want to do is make it stop. I am the youngest of my siblings by roughly 10 years and most of my childhood has been spent longing to catch up with them. My sights have always been set on the milestones ahead of me and the independence that accompanies those milestones. I think we are all alike in this way. We dream of being 15 so that we can get our permits and once we’re 15 all we want to do is be a year older so that we can have our own cars and drive alone. After turning 16, we desire to be 18 so that we can legally be “an adult”, move out and rent rooms at select hotels and condos (if we’re lucky). After 18, we set our gazes on 21 and drinking. After that, we think it’s over. We think that we’re free birds and can do what we please without being stopped. We’re wrong.
Most people don’t know that even at the age of 21, you still can’t rent the majority of cars and condos without an additional signature of someone 25 and older. In addition, there are a lot of other growing pains that get lost in the excitement of entering into adulthood; here are some of them.
1. Mo’ money, mo’ problems.
Unless you’re Donald Trump and received a “small loan of a million dollars,” you understood this saying before I even explained it. Getting your first real job and being able to work full time is exciting and if you’re anything like me, you have an endless trail of dollar signs in your mind when you think about your paychecks. If you can’t decide what to spend your hard earned dollars on, you’re in luck because life decides for you. If you’re going to college, you can count on the fact that if tuition cost doesn’t kill you, the price of your textbooks will. Staying the night at hotels? Forget about it. You almost have to sell your soul to the devil or your organs to science to be able to afford a vacation anywhere. Then comes the fun part: you’ll have bills, lots of them. Better than that, copays, health care and medication will kick you when you’re sick and vulnerable and God forbid that you go over your monthly data. The emoji of money with wings is more realistic than you thought. From a young age, we learn that everything costs money. What we don’t learn is that everything costs a lot of money.
2. You have to be experienced to get experience
If you think you can wake up one day and get a credit card in your name or a good job, think again because you need credit and a job to obtain credit and a job. At the bottom of every application, you will inevitably find an experience section. So, how do you get started in this crazy backwards world, you ask? Let your bank loan out your own money to you or work unpaid as an intern or trainee until you’re deemed “experienced”. There is no easy transition into adulthood. It comes in like a wrecking ball and you are forced to find ways to adjust.
3. “Relaxing” is a figment of your imagination
How do you define relaxation? You probably envision vacations or days at the spa. As an adult, you can cross these things almost entirely off of your schedule. If your wallet isn’t screaming “no”, your never-ending to-do list will be. As an adult, and especially an adult in college, sleep is even unattainable at times. You’ll soon realize there aren’t enough hours in the day to get anything done and even if you find time to sleep, you probably won’t be able to take advantage of the situation because you’ll lie in bed thinking of all of the things you’ll have to do tomorrow instead. When people ask me what I do in my free time, I have to think about what free time is. In the adult world, free time is doing things on your own and not having to talk to anyone in the process – like showering, sleeping and scrolling down your Facebook feed.
4. Metabolism is arch nemesis #1
I was always told “one day that will catch up to you” and thought “yeah, okay, whatever” but unfortunately, they were right; it will catch up to you and it’s running at the speed of lightning without rest breaks. One day, deceptively just like all of the others, you’ll wake up and everything you eat will find a place to call home and will stick out of your body in the form of rolls, handles and tops of muffins. On that day, the day your metabolism betrays you, you will learn that you have to work out to keep from being a monotonous blob of human flesh. You’re expected to eat healthy, limit your snacking and partake in despicable health fads like kale smoothies and quinoa. In fact, envision all of the foods you enjoy eating. They’re probably all bad for you somehow. Best of all, many people develop late-onset allergies which means you could wake up one day and break out in hives from eating your favorite candy bar. The list of foods you can enjoy guilt-free becomes depressingly small and your stomach becomes depressingly large.
5. Growing up and growing apart
No one tells you that some of the happiest moments of your life make way for some of the most saddening. When you graduate, you will inevitably fight with distance for some of your fondest friendships. You and your friends will get separated by different colleges, marriages, new jobs, children and even new groups of friends. The process of growing up isn’t an easy one and it is one that involves numerous “goodbyes.” If distance doesn’t get in the way, differences in the way you grow into your own person probably will. You will find you can’t avoid losing friendships and you may even have to cut strings on your own. However, it is possible to hang on too. We won’t see our friends every day on our lunch break or once the school bell rings -- we just have to find the people who are worth traveling across states for and catching up with for hours on end every once in a blue moon. Needless to say, lasting relationships require effort and many of the relationships you have won’t be long-lasting. You will learn that this is alright.
6. You’re expected to know things you never learned
In the “real world”, no one holds your hand. Whatever you encounter, you will be expected to know how to do and do well. You will soon realize that you won’t actually use the Pythagorean theorem in your daily life (or ever) and no one taught you how to do many of the things that actually matter, like filing your taxes, doing laundry or filling out a W-2 form. No one educates you in high school on how to buy a house or car, how to stay out of debt, how to manage a checkbook or how to avoid getting taken advantage of. These are all things we are expected to know but never really learn and as a result, we overdraw our bank accounts, transform our favorite clothes into tiny pink pieces of cotton and make bad decisions at times.
7. The problems you think are problems get a whole lot more problematic
We all remember how traumatizing cleaning our rooms were as children. As adults, we now have entire houses to clean. We now have to make meals instead of just making our plates. Everything you thought was annoying before becomes mandatory and is suddenly a whole lot more of a nuisance.
8. There is always someone to answer to
Remember that cute rebellious stage you got away with in high school? You didn’t beat the system. Your parents are the least of your problems in the grand scheme of things and are, probably, the most on your side. The truth is that the “real world” is always giving you someone to please. Whether it be your teacher, your boss, the police or the IRS you will find that you just can’t do whatever you want to do without consequences. Awful, I know, but it gets better. Instead of getting grounded, you now can get arrested, fail out of school, get evicted from your house or die.
9. You’re expected to have it all figured out
As you’ve noticed throughout the majority of this article, people expect a lot of you. The older you get, the more you’ll be harassed about planning the direction of the remainder of your life. Thanksgiving will no longer be enjoyable because you’ll spend it answering questions like “Where is your boyfriend?” “Where are you going to college?” “What are you majoring in?” “When are you getting married and having kids?” You’ll hate this and will reminisce on the days that someone else had to answer these questions while you were hiding the sweet rolls somewhere for later. The truth is that as 20-somethings, none of us really know anything and if we think we know, we’re probably wrong. Picking a major is hard, deciding where you want to live is hard, commitment is hard and decisions are hard. We can’t be expected to know how we want to spend the rest 60+ years of our existence. Having everything planned out leaves no room for living and learning and that’s a pretty boring existence in my opinion.
So, breathe in and out, throw away the chicken you burned and the shirt you shrank to infant size and don’t rush whatever you’ve got going on now. “Adulting” is really hard at times and it’s not a whole lot of fun but it’s rewarding. Most of all, don’t stress about not having answers. Whatever you’re going through, you’re not alone in it and honestly, it’s okay to not know what you’ll be doing in 30 years or even later tonight. We’re pushed to grow up, grow up, grow up but we don’t have to waste our “now” by dreading our “tomorrows.” It will all come in time whether you want it to or not. I hope you take the time to enjoy the ride instead of wishing to reach your destination.
