Tag: adulting

I used to believe that adults arrived somewhere when they grew up. I carried this picture in my head of a final landing place where life would settle and the air would clear and everyone would communicate. With all this communication I would finally stand steady and know what to do. I imagined grown-ups as completed people. Whole. Wise. Calm. I held on to that belief like a promise that would arrive someday. I was wrong.

Adults are not finished. Adults are not completed works of art. Rather, adults are children who kept moving forward with broken pieces stitched loosely together carrying what shattered them, what rescued them, and everything they never learned how to name or were too damn afraid to name. Adults may have larger bodies with larger responsibilities, but inside, the storms still swirl. Inside, fear still resides and speaks. Inside, the past still taps on the glass and demands to be heard.

Adults call certain habits maturity. I see now that much of it is simply survival dressed in nice clothes. The same protective moves. The same rehearsed smiles. The same patterns repeating themselves quietly in the background like an old song that never stops playing.

For a long time I believed adulthood meant having life all figured out. I wanted that future version of myself to finally make sense of the chaos, to sort the pain of a dysfunctional military family childhood into neat boxes that would not spill over. Laughable, really. Instead, I began to realize that many adults remain stuck at the exact age when everything veered off course. The unprocessed parts of the story get dragged forward like heavy luggage. There is pretending. There is numbing. There are smiles that hide more than they reveal. And then there are a few, the rare few, who finally turn around, face what hurts, and begin again with shaky, honest steps leaving the past at that window.

Growing up, it turns out, is not about age. Growing up is about truth. It is about finally saying out loud where the freezing happened. It is about noticing where the running began. It is about admitting where fear still lives quietly inside the bones. Adults are not fully grown. Adults are still learning in real time. Adults are trying to parent younger versions of themselves while raising children, paying bills, showing up at work, and doing the best they can with the tools they have.

The sobering part is simple. No one fully arrives. There is no final plateau. There is becoming, and then becoming again. But buried inside that realization is something surprisingly tender. If no one is finished, then there is still room. There is room to soften. There is room to learn new language for old wounds. There is room to live with humility instead of perfection. There is room to forgive the child and the adult at the same time.

I did not get the certainty I once imagined. What I received instead feels truer. I am still growing. I am still learning. And that means the story is still open despite the adults in the room!