Thinking about the good old time, remembering how bad I
wanted to grow up, leave my parents’ house and go live my life the way I intended
it and waking up every morning thinking this is not what I signed up for, yeah
that’s about how frustrating life has seemed to be the past few… I don’t know…
years? As a kid or a teenager we have a very narrow perception of
what being an adult is like. All we see is being able to take our own
decisions, to do whatever we want to do, go wherever we want to go and do
things just the way we want them done. But reality is a whole different story than what you have been playing over and over in your head since your early childhood.
With growing up comes responsibility and being responsible sometimes means that
you will sometimes along the way take shitty decisions, make stupid mistakes
but hopefully you will learn from them.
Growing up also means that life becomes more complicated
with the years passing. Think about it for a minute: you go from being a baby to
toddler to pre-teen to a teenager. Your body starts to change, your mind too. Your
heart starts overruling your head, throw in a couple of heartbreaks and failed
relationships which totally destroy the ideal you had of love. And then you
graduate from high school and go to college and things only get a tad bit
worse. You add new factors to the equation such as 2 part time jobs to have
enough money to survive after you have paid your rent and bills every month,
loans to finance your college years which can go anywhere from 4 years (if you
are lucky) to 6 years for the most unfortunates who, after 3 years of college
still can’t figure out what major they want to declare or a year before
graduating realize that they are not ready to pursue a career in the major they
declared 3 years ago. I mean we all make mistakes don’t we? Well some of them
are just slightly more expensive than others.
Dating and being in a relationship doesn’t get any better
either: you either end up with someone who doesn’t give a shit about your feelings
or a stage 5 clinger whose favorite hobby is to talk to you at 5 am in the
morning. Then one night, you lay awake on your bed having an honest
conversation with yourself and figuring out that being single is not so bad and
could be the best option for you. Then you try to convince yourself of that
while pouring a glass of wine every night, sitting on your couch watching Bridget
Johns and also try to sell that idea to your friends who are also trying to fix
you up because they feel like your life is quite boring and that love is the
sparkle that would set fire to your life and make your world a better one (which
might be probably true or it might just reduce whatever you have left into ashes).
And then you leave your college years behind you someday and
start working and you go from the weirdo to the workaholic, you get married and
have kids and you kiss goodbye to that seemingly wild and selfish life and no string
attached lifestyle you used to live
because guess what? You have some solid strings attached: you are married! From
the top of my 20-something years, I come to spend most of my time missing the
good old days where the only things I would worry about were: 1-what am I going
to have for lunch/diner; 2-whose friend’s house am I going to play at and
3-what am I going to ask for my birthday or for Christmas. And then I look at
my life and I am baffled at how messed up my life is and even more baffled when realizing at the
same time how well I seem to be navigating and finding my way through that mess. I only wish I could be as
carefree as I used to be when I was a kid because boy… I was living THE life.
But let’s acknowledge that there are some good sides of being
an adult though. Which ones? Can’t think of any right on the top of my head but
I am sure there are some. I yet have to look for them while pouring a glass of
wine, sitting on my couch. Meanwhile think about how blessed you are from
having the life you have because one: there is someone out there wishing to
live it and two: honestly it could be worse...
..So smile and be happy
