Feeling: Baby Adult
Written by Jennifer A. Cheong
Image courtesy of Amanda Zhu (@schmoond)
These days I find myself seeking out things that’ll make me feel just a little bit more. The expectations I placed on adulthood as a kid made it easier to fall face flat into disappointment. The bars aren’t a thriving hot place to meet people. People don’t dance in clubs. It’s rare to have a decent conversation while waiting for the bathroom. I find it easier to respond to texts I’ve been meaning to send instead of awkwardly shuffling my feet before working up the courage to chat with the other girls also waiting for the loo. Small talk has become weird, abnormal even. It’s not reciprocated anymore. Dare I say, it seems like we’re all too worried about appearing cool that we’ve become uncool?
“Dare I say, it seems like we’re all too worried about appearing cool that we’ve become uncool?”
The very few friends I do have are too busy dealing with their own problems to worry about mine. We have to schedule a time to meet weeks in advance. Dining out is expensive. Drinks are expensive. Living is expensive. The responsibilities that come with growing older is in itself a stressor. It’s not just me that seems to be growing. The hairs on the top of my mom’s head are outgrowing her hair dye much too quickly for her to keep up. I’ve begun to wonder when I’ll sprout my first gray hair.
Aging doesn’t seem to bother me as much anymore. I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m not carded at every bar I visit and occasionally get asked if I’m 25. I’m not, but it’s always followed by a comment on how mature I appear. I’ve been brushing it off. I have been neglecting my sleep.
God forbid you go outside to clear your head and get off your phone, only to get another pointed your way. It’s only then that I say my mental prayers to the higher beings so that I don’t end up in the background of a viral TikTok. I don’t want to see myself on my feed at all. It’s a teensy fear I fear will become a reality someday. TikTok now has the option where you can upload pictures as a comment. I fear the off chance of becoming a laughing stock for a few seconds when I also engage in the same giggling behaviors. It's a strange feeling, knowing I’m always being watched and observed.
It’s one thing to be aware that the government is surveilling your existence, but another to wonder if the girl recording the cafe aesthetics caught you furrowing your brow at your laptop. I know it’s not just me that’s been painfully conscious of cameras. Is anyone else running into“ social panopticon” more frequently these days? I’ve started counting — and it’s come up in three real, in person conversations.
The perception of being perceived and surveilled makes me feel as if I need to appear more proper and put together. But lately I’ve been wondering if that’s been preventing me from actually living my life at all. I naively assumed the world was pure as I saw it to be. I lived by the very rules and standards I deemed were correct. You know how the stories go — good prevails evil, and they lived happily ever after, right?
No, they did not. Fairy tales are stories for a reason. The world is crueler than I want it to be, but what can I do? There’s only so much that I can change on my own. You would think therapy would’ve taught me all that I needed to know about radical acceptance, but it’s truly taken time to not let the smallest of things shift my mood for the rest of the day.
It pains me to keep falling down the doomsday news cycle of all the terrible, I mean, wonderful things that the United States has been doing for its people. It truly is a crash and burn situation, but what can we do other than to pick up the pieces and keep moving forward?
You know how they say that people come and go? I was never able to completely wrap my head around the fact that you could cut people out of your life if needed. It only took me a falling out of ingenuine friendships, a breakup, and the realization that I’m now the age my mother was when she got married to wake up and live the life I want to live. I don’t know where I will end up next, but the options are endless. The world is vast. There are so many more people to meet and love.
I’ve decided that it’s more uncool to keep worrying and keep myself from trying all that I want to do. I’ve been called“ weird” one too many times to let it actually stop me from building character and relationships that I care about. I’ll act upon my whims and desires (safely, within my means). Adulting is scary, but there’s no saying that you can’t do something while being scared.
I’m at a point and time in my life where it feels as if I can do anything I set my heart out to do. Granted, that really isn’t the case. But it’s nice to think of all the possibilities that open up given my desire to pursue it.
I am a baby adult. I’m a little scared. But I won’t let that stop me from chatting up a storm if I see someone cool. The more bad conversations I have the merrier. It’ll help me find my people. I also love to step in to take pictures for other people. People eat that up. And it helps to get off that damn phone. Cheers to being messy, baby adults.
