Keianna

When I was little I assumed being an adult would look like a business woman. It would like the clicks of high heels against the floor and papers being shuffled in the midst of a big work meeting. The taste of black coffee at 5 am was the secret weapon that unlocked whatever it was that made adults so much smarter than myself and my peers at that age. I was sure that was the reason I wasn’t allowed to have it, I couldn’t be as smart as adults, they wouldn’t appreciate it.

In the United States you are seen as an adult the second you turn eighteen years old. On my eighteenth birthday, I woke up to multiple texts saying something along the lines of “Don’t do anything stupid. You’re an adult now and you can go to adult jail.” It’s not like I was participating in acts that would land me in jail. I think that’s just the only life advice that was appropriate and light hearted enough to give on my “big day”.

I was still a little freaked out. I’m an adult? Since when? I only have one pair of high heels and I hate them. Black coffee is disgusting. I’d much rather have a very sweet iced caramel macchiato. All in all, I’m not looking like what I thought an adult would look like and I’m sure I know less than what I used to think I did.

Right now looking like an adult to me is writing out my shifts at my job, that doesn’t include paper shuffling, and not planning anything around those times. It sounds like me telling myself out loud that I am above rude customers who think it’s okay to berate workers. It feels like teaching myself to not act like the adults in my life who were put here for the sole purpose of teaching me how I shouldn’t act.

I’ve been reading a lot about “adulting” considering I feel so behind and realized that adulting looks so different for everyone. Just like there was no one way to experience being a teenager there’s no one way to adulthood. So I guess I’ll just feel it when I’m an actual adult. Maybe there will be an event where I’m like, Yup I’m adulting at least 89% right now. Maybe I won’t and I’ll live the rest of my life in the comfort of not knowing. Either way, I know how to make almost anything in a microwave and that’s pretty cool.