Almost Adulting: All You Need to Know to Get It Together (Sort Of)

LET’S GET IT STARTED IN HERE

When I was nine, adult looked like my parents. At fourteen, adult looked like my brother studying for college exams. At age eighteen, adult looked like women who could get into bars without fake IDs. As a twenty-one-year-old, adult has come to mean something new and strange. Because, as it turns out, I’ve been adulting for quite some time without even realizing it.

I always thought that once you reach a particular age or some particular milestone in life, a stranger runs up to you, slams a stack of papers into your chest, and exclaims, You’ve been served! Upon closer examination, these very official documents detail the intricacies of applying for adulthood. After several days of intense administration, sleepless nights trying to remember your social security number, and bouts of carpal tunnel, you’ve completed your application. You wait anxiously in line at the post office with all the other prospective adults and then cast your entry into the abyss of the postal service system, hoping a reassuring letter will be delivered promptly to you in response.

You immediately start thinking of all the things you could do with your very own adulthood. What kind of path-altering confidence will you gain? It could change the very fabric of your life! One day you will order a margarita without hastily adding the word virgin. You might be able to have a conversation with your overly religious mother without profusely sweating five minutes in. You consider all the impressive retorts you’ll be able to spew at your nosy friends when they won’t leave you alone about your obsession with cats on Instagram. You might even be able to make a compelling argument about the benefits of following Grumpy Cat WITHOUT STUTTERING.

I know. Right now you get the creeping suspicion that your life kinda blows, being a youth and all. Being young and hungry and unsure isn’t as fun as promised. The word teenager doesn’t have the same intrigue it had at thirteen. You envy your older friends who have their lives perfectly in order, like a well-managed Bed Bath & Beyond. You wonder when your organizational skills and willpower will kick in. It seems as though everyone who could be seen as adult has their life moving along at the pace of a properly programmed machine. Maybe that’s what it means to be an adult, you ponder. Having your shit together. Yeah, that must be it! You see older people with jobs and cars and houses and families, and you think of the stability and poise that must follow.

All you want is entry into a club that everyone older seems to have been surreptitiously welcomed into. You start to wonder why you haven’t been ushered into it, too. After all, your application for adulthood was put forward weeks ago! You worry you might not have what it takes. You think back on your recent actions. So, yes, last month, you did turn your used underwear inside out instead of doing laundry. And then you wore that used inside-out underwear. For three days. CRAP. How could someone with such a clear lack of self-respect and hygiene be considered an elite adult? When you look around at the crisp shirts, company credit cards, and family vacations, it all looks vaguely foreign and intimidating. You never should have sent in your application in the first place!!!

Adulthood must be a much tougher road than you made it out to be in your addled little pea brain. If they’re going to make you do dishes and dust things every now and then, what other atrocities must follow? Attending high school acquaintances’ lackluster weddings? Downloading and subsequently subjecting your heart to dating apps like Tinder? God forbid you have to make a doctor’s appointment over the phone. You might have to call Dr. Wheeler for a dentist appointment BY YOURSELF???

No.

You begin to regret your initial greediness. Is there anyone you can call to get your application canceled? You are not ready for adulthood, and adulthood is not ready for you. You begin asking around, trying to figure out at what age people usually get accepted into adulthood. Everyone seems to have a different number. Some say twenty-one. Others say thirty. You hope it’s thirty. Yeah, you have a good feeling about thirty. You obsessively calculate the time you have left, running your own childlike wonder of the world down like an hourglass, the last grains of sand slipping to the bottom. You start noticing everyone’s age. The number of child prodigies coming out of the woodwork on the news is worrying you. Your mom sends you a video on Facebook. It’s an interview with an eleven-year-old from Tennessee about her re-creation of the Sistine Chapel in her family’s small southern home. It’s beautiful. It brings you to tears. Not because of the majesty of the painting itself, but because of the lack of success you’ve had in comparison. She painted it when she was ten. She says she’s gotten better since then. You’ve gotten better at not picking your nose since you were ten. Each brushstroke she issues while making her latest masterpiece (probably the fucking Mona Lisa) swipes away a fragment of your young potential. You’re left feeling inadequate. Outdated. Used.

The next day, a small envelope arrives on your doorstep. Your name is coldly printed in plain block letters on the front. Your shaky hands pick up and hold the letter in disbelief, denial, and dread. Is this it? Has my fate been sealed by the Big Brother–like authorities enforcing adulthood? As you tentatively pry apart the adhesive-edged envelope, you question how you got to this place. What could have possessed you to willingly apply to the never-ending process of aging? You were once so bright, so alive. An abundance of wasted potential. You probably could have been in the Olympics for gymnastics or diving. Probably. You slowly pull the edge of a folded piece of paper from the ominous sheath. Your heart races as your blurry vision tries to make sense of the shapes forming words on the page.

OVERDUE BILL NOTICE. If you do not submit payment for your previous parking violation, we hereby notify you that your license will be sus—

You crumple up the page and toss it into the pile of other papers you’ve been willfully avoiding. You promise yourself that tomorrow will be your admin day, in which you’ll snap into an organizational robot. How forward-thinking of you! You silently give yourself a pat on the back even though you hadn’t done anything yet.

You make your way into the kitchen, searching the pantry for an appropriate meal to help you forget about the parking ticket. You spy a half-stale box of Double Stuf Oreos. You consider grabbing a plate to partition a reasonable portion of cookies, then scoff at the thought. As if you have any semblance of self-control. You take your dinner and swaddle yourself in blankets on the living room couch. Gorging on your meal of choice, you flick through the latest array of movies on Netflix. Your nightly ritual commences: Eat. Watch. Sleep.

You’re not a sad case. You’re just a human being with a basic need to relax after a long day. You look around and notice that your plants are getting a bit wilt-y. But you know you can wait a good two more days before things get to the point of no return. You’ve killed more plants than you can count and have finally resigned yourself to a succulents-only lifestyle. One day a mysterious white fuzz is going to creep up on your cactus. You will, as you always do, watch in detachment as the poor thing is devoured over a month of agony. You will buy a new cactus the next day in a bright-blue pot.

And that, right there, is the moment. Without being conscious of it, you are an adult. You’ve been adulting all along. You might not feel any different than when you were thirteen and footloose and fancy free, but you are. You have responsibilities now—even if you actively ignore them constantly. You are relied upon to be a real human and do real human things, and if that isn’t the definition of adulting, my life is a lie.

In the pages that follow, I’m going to attempt to validate you. We’re going to discuss sex, romance, feng shui-ing your living space, and all things in between. By the end, I want you to feel like the wonderful, capable goddess you are. Being an adult isn’t as scary and intimidating as it seems. You’ve probably been a full-blown grown-up for a while without realizing it. Now we can just finesse your individuality and figure out what makes you the interesting son of a bitch that everyone wants to get to know. So let’s do this thing, reader. Let’s figure out what almost adulting means to you.

Let’s not forget that everything you read in this book is from my perspective. Your opinion about sex or interior decorating might be different from mine. That’s totally fine and dandy, and I actively encourage you to question my own thoughts and feelings toward life. So sit back, grab a large mug of tea, and let’s get into it!

THE THINGS YOU ABSOLUTELY MOST DEFINITELY NEED TO KNOW ABOUT BEING AN ADULT

Adulting can be an arduous journey to undertake, and there are several things you’re going to need in order to navigate these murky waters. Obviously you need to go buy toilet paper and always have trash bags (Amazon Prime is going to be your new best friend), but there’s so much more to being adequately prepared for adulthood. First and foremost, learn how to use a washing machine. I have no patience for people unable to use either a dishwasher or a washing machine. THE BUTTONS ARE SO SELF-EXPLANATORY. Also, have you ever just, I don’t know, problem-solved for once and done something for yourself? I’ve been doing my own laundry since I was twelve. Granted I had a medium-sized family that required an every man for himself mentality, but c’mon. I’d say the majority of offenders in this particular domestic realm are guys, but I’ve seen some girls really screw the pooch when it comes to separating lace and things with aggressive zippers. Honey, it’s called a lingerie bag. Get one! Your non-holey underwear will thank you!