I have a hunch that if I told you “I’m still waiting to feel like an adult,” you’ll know what I mean.
There’s some unnameable trait I observe in others my age. That grown-up effect: some put-together quality, a wisdom in knowing themselves or knowing how to handle whatever comes next. A sophistication, an authority. Though true, I notice it often in peers that have kids or neighbors with impressive careers, that something doesn’t seem bound by status or what I might be intimidated by. I’ll watch it flicker or stay put in some close friends, colleagues, my partner, even my younger siblings at times. A look, a poise, a presence that feels years beyond our shared age or mindset. In the morning, I’ll practice maturity in the mirror, leveling my eyebrows just so, rolling my shoulders back, raising my chin. What is it?
*Let me clarify first by saying: I’m not setting out to say one feeling is morally superior to the other. I’m in no rush to oust my remaining youth or whimsy, nor do I want to position this as something to solve—just philosophizing a phenomenon in what I’ve observed in myself and in conversation with those around me. I also, behind all this detective work, know those I envision as “proper adults” are not wrung dry of their playfulness and naïveté, either.
There are moments I glimpse that sophistication in myself, but it feels more as if I’m trying on my mother’s lipstick or leaving a fake name at a cafe: playing a role that doesn’t completely belong to me. I know I’m still acting. I illustrate my creative strategy in a work meeting, then return to a daydream or another short story about ghosts. I don’t flinch when telling the car salesman he can give me a better offer, then wipe my sweaty palms over my jeans when he leaves. I swish mouthwash between my teeth before bed in a Winnie the Pooh night shirt three sizes too big for me.
A younger self revels in this adult-found ability of taking my dog out on a road trip for two; winks at myself in the thrift store mirror after finding something new to suit my changing style. At other times, I’m too aware of how that younger self never left; when I have a good cry in the grocery store parking lot, wailing along to No Doubt’s Just A Girl, unable to pinpoint where my sadness is coming from, when I look up from making lunch with a profound longing to cartwheel through the grass and play; when I tell my therapist I don’t think I’ll ever grow out of this—feeling twenty years old with thirty-year-old responsibilities.
I thought maybe that “grown-up” sensation would come at twenty-five, once my brain finished its last touches, etch-a-sketched a few more creases, nailed down the public service announcement memorizing how to calculate a tip or properly use didactic in a sentence so I could stop Googling it.
My best friend and I have certain stand-out celebrities or characters we call permission-giving, in that, while living in the adult world and maintaining a sense of “having it together,” we can still see ourselves in them: messy, silly, overwhelmed, loud, emotional, or at the very least, have probably brushed crumbs from a snack in bed from their sheets more than once. Miss Honey rollerblading in the living room. Eartha Kitt’s defiant confidence. Jenny Slate’s squealy scream and giddy short stories. Sally moaning in faux climax for the whole restaurant to hear. Even as I write out that list and know I experienced all of those as a teenager, at face value, none of those concepts are immature or anything above what I would expect an adult to feel.
We sit cross-legged in her room, bringing other faces to mind, wondering aloud, “Do you think Meryl Streep feels angst?” “Do you think our mothers—underneath all their rigidness still feel twenty?” Are those the unnameable factors—or lack thereof? Is it worry? Curiosity? Wonder? Vulnerability? Angst?
It seems impossible to have this discussion without framing where I thought I’d be (and similarly, where my friends and other loved ones imagined where they might be) at my/our current age when we were younger and measuring that evident gap as a contributing factor.
Several years and selves ago, I was still in a high-demand religion, on the cusp of getting engaged, and setting down a structure for my future that felt good: I’ll get married within the next year or so. I’ll hope to have my first kid around twenty-six. By then, I’ll have my roots a little more settled, I think I’ll be ready. It’ll be hard, but I’ll manage a career in writing, maybe as an editor or managing my own press while being a mother. Spoiler: None of that works out, thank goodness. But given such a detailed outline for myself, it’s no wonder I’m feeling a bit behind, even though some of those plans aren’t what I want anymore.
When I talked about this feeling, this clinging sense of adolescence, to my partner, he added his own experience. “I think a lot of it relates to the world we imagined our adulthood taking place in, too. It feels like we’re living in a parallel, or on a track a few degrees away, from what we expected. I remember using Eternal Sunshine of A Spotless Mind as a good indicator of where I’d be around thirty. Both Clementine and Joel can afford their own places in New York, something Clementine can seemingly do while working at Barnes and Noble. As we’re getting to the same age, that feels impossible now.”
So of these two factors, whatever I’m feeling internally, and whatever the world allows externally—is this situation a game of chicken in seeing which flinches first? Are they two blocks I can try to push or mold together in my hands? What is within my control of change? Is it a matter of which was caused by consequence, which might’ve happened first—or does that matter at all?
In its oscillation between whatever maturity might be and the teenager that winks back at me sometimes, I do love that my life can be a bit amorphous. I know there can be room for both, and there are some things I hope never change. I do love the strides I’m taking, one responsibility and distant milestone at a time. I know, in my friends and myself, there is both grief in where we could be, but satisfaction in what we’ve managed. Above all, knowing we can be silly and messy, but still capable; hoping that dreams that have lasted through these shifting life changes and landscapes might still be possible.
I know, no matter how I mature, I might always wake wanting a call in the morning, informing me the world’s taken a snow day. I’ll still watch the soap gather when washing my hands and chance blowing a bubble. I’ll pull my legs in when diving off the dock and meet the lake with a cannonball splash. From an apartment, a house, the front seat of my car, from the presenting spot in a meeting room, by myself, among a group of friends, or with a spouse beside me, my laughter might ring out a little lopsided around the edges.
with love,
schuyler (sky-ler)
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Recently, I‘ve been really mulling over how much maturity I „owe the world“ (which probs isn‘t a thing but yah) so all of this is so deeply relateable for me: the permission characters, the ambivalence between feeling adult and like a teenager, wondering if some magical flip will switch at 25.
This entry has perhaps much more universal resonance than you may know.
While more than a bit older than thirty, I no less relate to these sentiments likely more than I initially felt I might.
No judgement…or very little anyway, as to my own recognition of this perspective.
In a way, your acknowledgment of and sharing this bit of relative vulnerability is quite freeing on the receiving end. So, thank you.
I find your work consistently refreshing, and always look forward to the next.
All the best of energies to you, Schuyler 🙏🏻