Let’s talk about being an adult.
Sometimes it still honestly surprises me that I’m allowed to run around making my own day-to-day, possibly life-changing decisions without adult supervision… because I am the adult.
Sometimes I’m driving to work, or grocery shopping, or out with friends on a week night wondering when I’m supposed to feel the way I thought being an adult would feel. I remember looking to people older than me as a kid with awe and reverence because I was so excited to one day be “that age” with as much wisdom and togetherness as I thought all adults had.
Sometimes it makes me giggle — then shudder — thinking about how wrong I was.
I grew up and pretty much went through high school thinking that I was going to: have a high school sweetheart I would marry and live “happily ever after with”, have and raise my own kids (two — two boys named Theo and Elliott or a boy and a girl named Elias and Ella), and have a musical empire under my belt with theatrical stage shows, multiple Grammy awards, and adoring fans asking me to sign one of many of my CDs with the signature I perfected all through childhood — all by the time I was 25.
Well now the joke is on me.
I’m 24, just starting to get my fingers into the soil of music where I want to plant my ideas and dreams. My hair is purple. I wear a fake nose ring most days. I sometimes make elaborate meals for dinner one day and then eat vegan chicken noodle ramen, popcorn, and kale chips the next. I still tend to dress like the five year old with the *wild* dreams of motherhood and ultimate stardom but with a little more style [luckily]. I definitely don’t have a high school sweetheart to fawn over, and am nowhere near any aisles I could walk down in a white [possibly pink] dress. And don’t get me started on how I feel about kids now.
But the fun thing is that being an adult means I get to dye my hair purple, and wear a fake nose ring, and chase my dreams with reckless abandon because it’s finally my own life to live with nobody guiding me towards their ideas of who I should be.
It also means learning to embrace adult responsibility in everyday life, like taking your car to get a new battery before work starts then Lyfting to work then back to the auto shop at the end of the day. Luckily for me I also ended up with two female drivers, which was nothing short of a miracle in my mind. It means snoozing your alarm for an hour but still getting up in the nick of time to get done what you need to get done. It means figuring out a balance between thinking of your future when making decisions and living purely in the moment as much as possible to enjoy as much as you can at the age you are. It means owning up to your bullshit when you’re wrong, standing up for yourself when you’re right, and knowing your boundaries over what feels good or not. It means helping where you can and asking for help when you need it. It’s learning and growing and changing and powering through the mundane bits of work on and for yourself so that one day you’re looking in the mirror at this badass human who has survived everything good, bad, and wonderfully strange that life has thrown at you.
I might still need adult supervision through some of it, though. Just in case.
Heart Matters 