Recently I've become really....exausted with the role of being an adult.
This August I'll be turning 23 which, for most people, you would think is an age where one SHOULD be pretty well versed in the motions of being an adult and doing adult things, but this is not really the case for myself.
I come from a large family, and compared to many of my siblings growing up, I was ALWAYS the first to do ANY AND EVERY THING. That is until around highschool, I became very depressed and affected by various events going on in my personal life around then and to kind of "cope" with the pressures, I allowed myself to "regress" or even become what I consider more "selfish".
This pattern of behavior lasted for me well after highschool, as I was still dealing with in unhealthy manners. This resulted in me doing things like NOT going off to college, NOT getting a job (but that was partially due to health issues as well), and basically, I spent a lot of my time up until this past year, doing A LOT of "living for myself", and really trying to reconstruct the damage that had been incurred to me in my highschool/middleschool years.
But, because of this, I've been much of a late bloomer in terms of doing all my living as an "adult". I've only had one job and it was a summer internship TWO YEARS ago, which I used and invested my money from there to launch my company. Then last year, I finally moved into my own apartment, and started paying my own bills for the first time. And this year, I've started dealing with the bullshit that is health insurance/healthcare issues.
For many years now I've been in the process of trying to address my health. It's something I'd like to write more indepth about, but that will have to be saved for a future blog (or vlog who knows). But continuously, health insurance has not only been a HUGE hindrance to me getting the help I NEED, but it's become something that gives me paralyzing amounts of stress.
And recently, it's a large part of why I haven't been posting at all since APRIL, even though I've been out of school now for almost a month. Between school, business issues, traveling (for business), and trying to address my insurance/health care, it's just been a very over whelming few months that has left me pissed off that i wasted soo much of my times where I was allowed to be care free, NOT being more productive.
All of these things I've realised are part of me being an adult. Age is something we like to tack onto WHEN someone can be considered an adult, but recently I've started to feel that maybe that shouldn't be the case at all. Maybe being an adult is more subjective, and one should be considered an adult when they have reached the mental capacity to truly understand their responsibility not just for themselves, but how their actions, words, and participation in a community affect others.
I'm starting to realise that, even though I once considered that I was an adult at age 18, I'm just now realising, I'm only JUST NOW starting to be a true adult, someone who is responsible for myself and those around me, who is thoughtful and aware of how my actions truly have an affect on my environment, and also takes priority on being a conscientious member of my community. As they say, your brain doesn't really reach full maturity until on average people are 25, and as a child of only 18 I used to scoff at that because at the time, I truly believed this was ridiculous and couldn't picture myself being any MORE conscientious or developed then I was at that moment.
I now know in hindsight, how VERY TRUE this statement is. I look at my behavior and thought patterns from just a year ago and I can't even relate to that person any more. I am constantly surprised and I continue my growth and noticing my friends around me ALSO experiencing these same revelations, and experiences of being a "true adult"an are still only just scratching the surface of being an adult.
It really has brought me to question, when will we as a society be able to recognize this as a whole? Should we really continue to believe that people who are 18 are truly developed enough to be considered able to take on all the responsibilities of being an adult? It's brought up alot of personal revelations in me in terms of being more understanding and forgiving on people who are younger than me, instead of jumping to a judgmental standpoint of "well you're an adult, you should know better", because I realise now, even just looking at my own past, that no, we don't always know better.
I think being an adult IS BULLSHIT. Especially with where our society is right now. It is SO unforgiving to young adults and people who are still LEARNING HOW to be an adult.
Yes for many at 18, they ARE able to integrate into society and fulfill the societal standards of being grown straight out of highschool. But for those like myself, who are still growing and learning, it's a struggle. Every day is a struggle, especially when I've found i start to feel like I'm running out of time to LEARN things, to pursue the activities I want to, and to enjoy my life. I continue to feel this pressure that I need to hurry up and fall into the expectation of getting a job, to be completely independent, to get a degree, etc etc. All while the things I really want to do, like blogging, traveling, pursue my business, get put on the side until I "have time" to do them.
Recently my life has become this bullshit cycle of going through checking my health insurance benefits, or paying off student loans, killing my bursts of creativity and passions because I can't focus put focus on those things at the expense of my focus on school. I keep finding that the things that make up ME or my own passions, continue to get put to the side because I'm struggling to figure out these various things ALONE.
I started to realise there is such a major lack of HELP and assistance out there for people making the transition from being children into adults. In many ways from college, to health insurance, to getting loans or setting up a credit card, or paying taxes, there are so many ways the system is set up to be AGAINST helping, and taking advantage of my age groups lack of knowledge and naivety. I have started to find is that being an adult is full of so much bullshit it keeps us in this roundabout of struggle and ignorance so as to keep us from having the energy to really focus on what is truly important, and many times makes us loose site of that.
In the present what I've mostly found is that being an adult is a bunch of bullshit. Trying to be a responsible adult is nearly impossible, and I've realised that it makes me angry that I spent so much of my youth being given the impression that at my age now, I SHOULD be a well established adult who has my shit together and is completely independant of help from outside sources. But what I've come to learn is that many and most people my age, and even many before me, will not and do not find their stability until they are much older (some not at all). Even now, as I'm feeling many areas of my life finally falling into place, I still don't think in a year or two I'll have things figured out. Eventually though, I hope to get through the bullshit and be able to finally graduate into being a full adult and say "I DID IT, I GOT THROUGH THE BULLSHIT I CAN FINALLY START LIVING MY LIFE!".
I can only hope that I can work hard enough to get there before too much of my life has passed me by.
