Adulthood, I have come to realize, really is just making it up as you go along. When I was a child I thought at some point in my life I would wake up and magically feel like an adult. Like a switch it would happen overnight and I would know all the things. All of them.
Well I’m in my mid thirties and sometimes tell people I’m in my twenties. Not because I am embarrassed of my age, but because I still feel as if I am in that young part of adulthood where you get a pass at not knowing stuff and I forget that I am actually almost a decade older than what I tell people. I also noticed that when faced with a challenge I often just pass the buck to someone I deem, “more qualified.” Sure in some instances this is a responsible move, but in everyday life I think it’s time I pick up more of my own slack and flip the switch on adulthood.
I recently ended a relationship. We had been together for almost four years. Although we were the same age he seemed wildly more mature than me. He just knew how to do things. I told him I was ready to buy a house, but didn’t know how to go about it and he helped me through the process without a second thought. He constantly would fill in the blanks of things I didn’t know or wasn’t sure of. This was great at first. I felt taken care of, but then it became more than just picking up the slack. It started to feel that he thought I was incapable of doing anything on my own to the point of discouragement. I would express interest in something and he would actually say to me, “No, you’re not going to be good at that.”
This, for obvious reasons, weighed on me. It made me question my own strengths. Was I good at anything? How had I gotten this far in life and not felt I could accomplish something? I don’t mean to make him out to be a monster, because he wasn’t. He just exposed a weak spot I had and I didn’t know what to do about it. I think a lot of us feel inadequate because we are placed in a system that doesn’t necessarily reward individual thinking. We question our own abilities instead of just trying something.
After he and I broke up it felt as if the universe was straight up attacking me. In less than two weeks my lawn mower decided it no longer wanted to work, the sump pump in my basement gave up and my basement filled with water, my TV deemed itself useless, and a raccoon moved into my roof. In the past all of these things would have been passed off to someone I deemed more capable of handling the situation. However, I am on my own now and instead of breaking down and calling my ex I am picking up the metaphorical baton and handling these things myself.
I may have called him for the sump pump situation. What can I say? I’m not perfect and my basement was filling up with water, but all he did was tell me which new pump to buy. I am the one that watched a video on how to fix it and then armed with my IKEA tool set I did just that. On my own! I have never felt more proud. I told strangers on my way to work. They didn’t seem to care, but that didn’t discourage me.
My goal is to use this platform to encourage myself and others to learn how to do things themselves. Even if it feels impossible.
I’m flipping my own switch into adulthood.
I'm Unsupervised 