20-Something

Genuine question: When do you know when you have 'grown up?' Is it when you're allowed to join the army and vote at 18? Is it when you're allowed to legally drink at 21 and stop using that fake ID you've held onto for the past couple of years? When you don't just start another job but you start a career? Or is it when you finally get married and settle down into your own house and pay your own bills?

Turning twenty and being asked constantly about what I want for a career or what I want my future to be has really gotten me thinking about what I want not just in life but out of life. Many people may look at me and still see a kid, someone who's decades ahead of them, to make these decisions but at what age do I transition from being this 'kid' to being a contributing member to the adult society? When do I stop being looked at as an immature 20-something-year-old and start being considered a valuable member of society?

I feel as if I'm at a crossroads in my life with each path is surrounded by an uncertain fog. I've gone from being a carefree teenager in high school, only worrying about the daily gossip, working a stressfree summer job, what dress to wear to prom and going to track practices. I've suddenly been thrown into this world of competing for internships, going into programs that will either make or break my chances of getting a career I want, where people are making these huge decisions about life and I'm just... here, floating.

A little story real quick: my parents have been happily married for over 30 years. Growing up I was always told the story about how they met in college, my dad a linebacker for the football team and my mom was an outgoing, bubbly, young woman who eventually was on their college's homecoming court. At the ages of 21 and 22, they decided to get married and the rest is history. I loved hearing the story and growing up 21 seemed so old to me.

Recently though, I found an album with all of their wedding pictures and while going through it struck me how young my mother looked when she got married. My mother was only a year older than me when she got married. Just thinking about myself making that life-changing decision at this point in my life and, if I'm being completely honest, it's terrifying.

I think of a lot of things as 'grown-up things:' paying bills, getting married, having children, graduating college and it just doesn't seem right to me that I'm at that age where these things will start happening to me.

I still keep up with people I went to high school with and across the board it's interesting to see what different points everyone is in their lives. One girl got married only a couple of months after graduating, another is engaged and her wedding is this month, one girl is already a mom and one is expecting, several of my friends are traveling to Spain to spend an entire semester, some classmates are totally independent from their parents and some still have to ask their parents to stay out late.

It's not just people my age but also people older than me that make me afraid of this crossroad in life. I know more than a few people who are more than a few years older than me (at least five or six years older) who still at home, they don't pay rent, they have no aspirations to move out and they either don't have a job or reject everyone that comes to them because it's 'beneath' them. I'm terrified that I'm going to make a wrong decision at this point in my life that will cause my life to derail. There just seems like so much to do I don't even know where to begin.

Adulthood just seems like this tornado that I'm trying to tame with a lasso of dental floss. I want people to realize that I have no idea what I'm doing, I don't even know where to begin to understand what I'm doing. Honestly, how can I get this shit show I call my life together? I'm so stressed and no one seems to want to throw me a lifeline to be patient with me and help me understand what being an adult is about even though I'm expected to become one. I see some people flourishing and living their best life but then I see people who can't seem to get on their feet and start their life- where will I fall?

Growing up and making these huge choices is this daunting task that no one honestly prepared me for. I wish there was this magical book that gave me step by step instructions on how not to totally screw up being an adult, like "The Handbook for the Recently Deceased" in Beetlejuice, except for 20-something-year-olds.

I hope someday soon I will be able to tame the tornado of growing up with my dental floss. Until then, I will keep trying adult.