This first post came from my recent deep thoughts on life, and all that I miss in it. The biggest thing being my family and my "home". As time goes by, I miss these things more and more and sometimes chuckle to myself at how hard I worked to establish myself and my independence, only to want to return to the place in which I lacked these things. Oh, adulthood. You hurt so bad but feel so good.
How to Become a Grownup
Adulthood. If
there were ever a word to have such a loose interpretation, this would be
it. It is funny how this strange concept
of being a grown up works. If I evaluate my current lifestyle, I’d have to say,
yes…I’m an adult. Today, I took great joy in baking lasagna. I felt that my
Sunday was complete by mopping the floors and cleaning the toilet. Before
sitting down to write this, I made sure to take my daily vitamins and apply my
anti-aging moisturizer. These raucous-filled Sunday activities would indeed
suggest that; yes, I am an adult. I feel as if during your teens, all you think
about is how badly you want to be considered and treated as an “adult”. You so
badly want the respect and freedom that you just KNOW comes when you hit 18,
and the law tells you that you now deserve this new, prestigious title.
Freshman year of college rolls around, and hot
damn; you milk this new freedom for all its worth. Your parents are hours away,
which means that the only person to ridicule you for the shenanigans you inevitably
get involved in is, yourself. Your roommate is doing the same thing, and they
most certainly can’t judge you. Senior year of college rolls around, and you
sit up a bit straighter as you think, “ Oh, how I’ve matured”. You’re about to
finish out that degree you have so painstakingly worked for. Your days of being
poor are over. You won’t have to fret about shelling out those dollars for a
Redbull-vodka because hot damn, you’re about to have a money-breeding bachelors
degree. As you sit in your final exam for your last college course, you cannot
help but pat yourself on the proverbial back as you say, welcome to true
adulthood.
Day one of your
first “real” job rolls around and you are wide-eyed. Not only do you officially
have a salary, but also you have a retirement plan, health insurance, and even
an ID badge that says “staff”. Your naïve days are over, and you have entered a
world of learned intellectuals rolling in the dough. The only thing missing is
rolling in the dough. You slowly come to realize that you actually have less
money than you did in college, and the thought of going out on Wednesdays for
dollar Red bull-vodkas, throws you into a terror-filled spiral.
Day one of grad
school arrives, and you think, “God. I am motivated”. I work and am going to
school. I am a tough cookie, filled with knowledge, motivation, and inspiration.
Who is a grown up? This kid. As you balance this hectic, nonsense life, you
remind yourself of how independent you are, and how much you have grown on your
own. You remember that indeed, you have a family back home that loves and
supports you, but your life has grown in such a different direction, that you
sometimes feel like an altogether outcast.
You finish grad school;
take a breath, and think, “Wow. So apparently it is actually time to be a real
grownup”. You ponder, what is my purpose? What am I doing? Is this real life?
Holy shit, I am an actual grown up? No. Make it stop.
This is a fairly
accurate description of the past ten years of my life. The past decade has been
saturated with the strong desire to be a grown up, prove myself to myself, and
to everyone around me. The world we live in primes young adults to be the best
them that they can be, and to make their parents proud. I feel like it is
pounded into your head, from an early age, to be ambitious, successful,
independent, and motivated. Independence seems to be what defines true
adulthood and that coveted position of “being a grown up”. What I have recently
discovered is the sense of, “now what?” once you actually become a grown up.
I made it through
college. I made it through grad school. I make money, pay bills, buy groceries,
and do other boring grown up things. When I am sick, my mommy isn’t here to
make me soup. When I don’t clean my room, nothing happens. When I don’t take
the garbage out, no one judges me. So this thing called “being a grown up”, is really
not all that exciting.
Ten years later,
I find that my biggest grown up urge is to revisit where I was ten years ago.
After going out into the world, and experiencing love and loss, success and
failures, struggles and triumphs, and plain old life, I would love nothing more
than to share my grown up life with all that I so badly wanted to leave ten
years go.
The moral of the
story is that I find life to be one big oxymoron wrapped up in paper and tied
with a bow. My wants and desires have dramatically changed in this delicate
decade, proving that all I’ve ever wanted was to be a better me. Now that I
somewhat feel like I know who I am, I’d love nothing more than to be that “me”
back home. Boomerang this “better me” back to Wind Lake, Wisconsin where I stop
by my grandmas, just because I miss her hugs and want some tea. Where I lay on
my mom’s couch, watching Pretty Woman, because its Sunday and Sundays are spent
with Mom.
I think you
truly become an adult when you realize that all you ever wanted and need was
what you always had. You just had to go out in the world, navigate this crazy labyrinth
on your own, and come full circle back to where it all began. There, you will
find your true happiness.
Prove yourself,
be yourself, and find yourself. And then return to the place where you thought
you didn’t know yourself, and there you will find, what? Yourself.
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