As our fearless leader Olivia Rodrigo once said: ‘God, It’s brutal out there’ And boy was she not kidding.
I always thought that adults (aka my parents) knew everything and that their lives were perfect. They seemed to have it all figured out. It was as if they were professional jugglers and question answer-ers. When I legally became an adult, I thought there would be a switch inside of me that would flip. I would suddenly have an ‘adult’ brain that would magically fix all my problems. Imagine some cute pop song over a montage of scenes of someone girl-bossing the hell out of life, with there being no sign of effort or struggle. Unfortunately that’s not the case.
Levelling Up
Being an adult feels like levelling up in a game, where you gradually unlock different parts of a map. Once you have access to the full map, you can see everywhere you could go and all these possibilities are liberating, but it’s also overwhelming. It illustrates the fact that your future is now your responsibility. It’s on you whether or not you decide to go to the part of the map that has the trading post, which could earn you more money, or to do something else.
Translated to real life, an example of this is how well you do in university depends on the choices that help you get ahead or fall behind. Of course there are factors that could make doing well in university difficult, but it’s also your job to understand where you need help and how to help yourself.
Being adult means that there's no one to tell you what to do and your life is no longer organised for you. You’re the captain of your own ship. There's a pressure to constantly make the ‘right’ decisions whether it’s in a professional or personal context. It’s also hard to figure out what you really want and to not be influenced by what the people around you want for you or expect of you – and then from there, making it a reality.
Carrying Around Your Younger Self
I thought that you grew up in very definitive and static stages – like 'The Sims'. But, I’m realising more and more that getting older isn’t resigned to these isolated ‘stages of adulthood’. There's no feeling to being an adult, because you’re just an accumulation of everything you’ve experienced. You will always carry your younger/past versions of yourself. Now I understand when old people (25 years and older) say they still feel like a kid.
Honestly, it seems like the older you get the more problems you encounter. That’s not necessarily bad though. Yes, we don’t know everything, but we’re still growing, which is more than enough. To make mistakes and forgive yourself. To take what you learnt from those situations and move on.
These are all thoughts from a 20-year-old. Maybe when I’m 25 I will have a completely different outlook on life, but for now this is where I’m at in trying to understand this messy thing called adulthood.
Writer's Bio: Isabella is a second-year Arts and Media (Communications and Journalism) student at UNSW, Sydney Australia. She’s a keen baker, lover of plants, pilates and enjoys catching up with friends over long phone calls.
