5 Things I Learned About Being an Adult

1. Adulthood is about always being tired. Seriously, I think I’m more tired now than I was when I was a student. In college, I kept weird hours. I had classes scattered throughout the day, interrupted by some hours of shift work, so my schedule was always changing. If I was tired, I could go home and crash after a class or a shift, catch up on my zzzzzz’s, and then be fresh for the rest of the day. When you work a regular 8-5, you just go home tired every day. There is no “catching a nap” anymore.

Adults have to deal. Growing up, I rarely saw adults crying or showing grief. Recently, after my great grandmother passed away, I watched my family. So few people seemed absolutely distressed. But, after talking to some of them and hearing about some of their quieter moments, I realized that they all were heartbroken and grieving. Appearances are deceiving. Everyone was suffering. They just carried on, dealing with it quietly and in their own ways. I admire that kind of strength.

Adulthood is painful. I know I was lucky, but I had an idyllic childhood. Nothing bad really happened. My parents protected me and my siblings from a lot of hardships, and I spent most of my days running and playing in the woods and farm fields. It was magical. But then adulthood hit, and I've come to find that it’s full of death, broken relationships, disappointment, and heartbreak. Now, that’s not to say that I don’t have a great life, because I do. But it’s a different sort of wonderful than my childhood was. While my adolescent years blurred together as one big hazy time of play and joy, my adulthood has been marked with significant times of pain and loss.

 Adulthood is about pretending you know what’s going on. I think few people actually feel like an adult. Often when you ask someone how old they feel, or how old they think they behave, the person will say, “I feel 18,” or “I act like I’m 12.” Adulthood kind of creeps up on you, and down deep, I think we all still feel unsure about our lives, where we are going, what we are doing. Few people (if anyone) have their lives figured out. As a kid you think that adults know what’s going on, that they fully have a grasp on taxes, politics, or how the world works. But in reality, we just pretend that we understand all those “grown-up” things so that we can get by, so that children feel safe. As adults, sometimes we just pretend to comprehend what we think everyone else expects us to know.

 Adulthood is about learning. It’s a journey. As a kid, you think that when you've reached adulthood (first it’s 18, later it’s 21, and later than that you realize it’s probably never), that you’ll have everything figured out. You’ll think that you've “arrived,” that you fully know what you believe, your stance on politics, religion, etc. But in truth, the learning never stops. It shouldn't stop. How we see the world, what we know about the world is always changing as we grown and learn. And that’s a beautiful thing…even if it is frustrating at times.