That thing they call Adulthood

As a teen, I had a fairly good idea where I wanted to be in my 30’s, now that I am there…. Well…. Things are very different!

I thought I would have travelled half the world by now and had all these great adventures, maybe even gone backpacking through Europe and chanted with the Yogis in India, but they don’t prepare you to what adulthood really is.

There is something about giving in to being an adult that it just hits you one day and all these thoughts start running through your head, and you can’t seem to stop them.

You need to settle down now! You need to look for a steady job! You need to be established – Everyone else is! You need to be stressed out about the future! You are not young anymore! You are an adult now, start dressing and acting like one!

I tried having a corporate job, and I was so bad at it, it was eating me alive, I couldn’t deal with office politics and I hated the restraints. Now I feel like I am half an adult, I am married (no kids yet) and I am a stay at home wife. All adults around me work and I stay at home, cook, clean, do laundry and errands and I also found a free-lance job that keeps me a bit busy. Sure, that takes most of my time during the day, but most people look at me like I do nothing!

The questions keep coming at me from everywhere like they are crazy arrows trying to hit a vulnerable target. How come you don’t have kids yet?! How come you don’t have a full-time job?! What do you do all day?! Aren’t you bored staying at home all the time?! Don’t you need the money?! Well Thank you very nosey people in my life! Yes, I do need the money, yes I am bored sometimes, yes I wish I had a full-time job that didn’t make me think of creative suicide ideas! But the kids’ thing, well... that is nobody’s business… get out of my bedroom and my Uterus!

I have to deal with myself and people around me all the time. I have to explain to myself why I did not become the person I thought I would be when I was 15 and I have to defend myself in-front of people about the person I have become now, and it is EXHAUSTING!!!!!!

Sometimes I feel that I am happy with life, but life is not happy with me! like I wake up every morning waiting to be questioned by someone and having my life choices put under the spotlight; because we all know that everyone is an expert in everyone’s else’s life.

I do admit that I made a wrong choice in my career and I chose something that was not for me, now at 34, I am trying to switch careers and failing! But we pay for our own mistakes and paying for it I am! I may not be the person I thought I would be when I was 15, but I like who I have become, I just wish that people would like that as well.

I guess that for people being an adult means that you have to be married, with kids, a career and be happy and successful in all aspects; if they feel that you are not fulfilling one or a couple of those things then you are a failure to them. They never ask you if you are happy, they never wait and give you time, they never think that maybe you already have more of something that they don’t.

What I hate most about being an adult is the time aspect- What are you waiting for?!! You are 34!! You are not young!! You don’t have all the time in the world anymore!! It’s now or never!! If not now, then when?!! You are just wasting time and one day you will wake up old and regretful!! WOW!! Seriously people! I mean, maybe I do not have the picture-perfect life, but who does??

So, I wake up every morning with a smile on my face, not giving up hope, and knowing that one day things will change, because they always do. One thing I learned about being an adult is that nothing ever stays the same. Life is divided into cycles, and every cycle is something new. One day I was single and had a full-time job, next thing I am married and have a free-lance job, so next cycle who knows; maybe I will have kids or maybe a job or maybe neither but will be living in a different country!

I just wish I had the courage to tell some people that how they want to see me is not necessarily the best version of me, that I may not be what or who they want, but I am me, this is my journey and where I am now is exactly where I was meant to be.

Most people living the adult life are lost, most are unhappy and over stressed, and if anyone tells you otherwise then they are lying (with the exception of a very few who were lucky enough to fulfill their dreams) But we always have a vision of how things should be, what is right and what is proper, and we always make sure that we say it to others. We all have a few missing elements in our life, but we give excuses to ourselves as to why they are missing, but never an excuse to others.

Most of the negative thoughts about myself come from other people, from their looks, questions or comments; they poison me, my ideas and how I view myself. I have a long way to go myself, that I admit! But I am in no way a failure. I have my flaws, but I know what and who I am. I am a struggling adult, like most of us are.

I will leave you with this thought- If we are to try and satisfy only the views of those around us, we will wake up one day and not know who we are or why we are here, we are all unique and as much as we are all fundamentally similar, we are all so very different. We all want to be happy, but your happiness is not like mine. I am me, strong yet weak, I am me, an adult yet a child, I am me…. So, love me for all that I am, all that I have become and all that am trying to be, or just let me be!