Adulting Did Not Come With a Warning Label

 Sometimes I love the freedom of being an adult. I can stay up as late as I want, say as many cuss words as I want and eat candy for breakfast if I want. I like the freedom to set my own pace and make my own choices. HOWEVER, there are a lot of things about adulthood that no one EVER warned me about when I was young and dreaming of the day when I would be out from under the oppressing rules of childhood, like eat your vegetables and get eight hours of sleep (how dare something so ludicrous be asked of me)!

In middle school and high school when you have friends they are, like, totally your BFFs forever and ever and ever. I mean, you sign it at the bottom of every, single note that you pass in the hallway so it has to be true, right? Your first boyfriend is your one true love and you dream of moving far away from your parents, collecting Beanie Babies and living happily ever after. But the slow reality of it is this: as you grow up, relationships find space. One day your bestie for, like, ever has gotten a new career and doesn't have time to talk everyday like you have done for all those years growing up together. And, then, one day you wake up and it's been months and months since you have talked to her. And the boyfriend that you planned romantic dates of Pizza Pockets and beers with, well, he turned out to have his own path, too. No one warns you about the times you will grieve loss as you grow and, yet, no one will have died.

When we are growing up, we spend SO MUCH TIME saying, "When I'm a parent, I will never do ..." and insert absolutely anything that drove you nuts about your own parents. I, personally, used a lot of what my own experiences were as what-not-to-dos with my own child. I don't want her to ever feel neglected or forgotten because her parents aren't together. I don't want her to EVER hear the words, "Well, if you'd just lose some weight," from the people who are supposed to love her no matter how she looks, feels or acts. I can, however, tell myself this and keep those memories on the mental bulletin board of do-not-repeats, and still not always do right by my daughter. I can and will (and do) still find myself screaming at my child because I stepped on another block that brought me to my knees and threw out my back (but figuratively and not literally because with my shit knee falling to my knees will land me in the ER). No one warns you that, even if you don't want to, you will repeat some of your parents mistakes.

Remember when money was fun? Your mom would drop you off at the movies with 20 bucks and you could party all night on that. Or your dad would give you 50 bucks and drop you off at the mall and you'd come home with a whole new outfit? Man! Those were the days, yall! 50 bucks won't even cover the cost of shoes on my feet these days! But, even more, when I was that age I would look to the future and see a nice car, top of the line features, parked in a nice house, manicured lawns and all. My parents would tell me that this dream I had would 'cost a lot of money,' so I'm figuring 500, maybe 600, bucks a month for my dream come true. I mean, I shopped on 50 bucks a The Buckle so that was A LOT OF MONEY (to me). Now, here I am, cutting 1500 dollar checks every month just to have a house (which I love) whose lawn is rarely manicured and whose floors and doorways have already shifted in the four months I've lived here. No one warns you that 'a lot of money' is way more than you think it is. 

We, as adults, often ask ourselves, "Wouldn't it be great to go back? To have someone else paying the bills and be the star of the hallways, living carefree again?" I know that I've had that conversation with many of my friends. And, often, the answer is yes from the people in the group. I think that I have always been the odd man out because, for me, high school wasn't a dream. It was a struggle. I was lost. And after years of hard work and therapy, I don't want to go back to that. I like being someone who knows themselves, understands their strengths and weaknesses, as well as their value and worth. Now, I would take back my waist line and the ability to fall asleep when my head hit the pillow but that's about it. However, I would really have appreciated some kind of warning label to what was coming. That's all I'm sayin.