What No One Told Me About Growing Up

Hi, hello, happy Wednesday!

Today has been the best day for three very important reasons. 1 - I made homemade salsa and have been snacking at work since 10am. 2 - Jay Z released all of his music on Spotify. And, 3 - UNPROMPTED PROMPTS ARE BACK BB! It's been far too long since our last interweb chat, but this time Merrell and I included a mystery guest. Stay tuned for Merrell's article and the big reveal later this week!

Until then it's just you and me :)

People always said growing up would be a “journey.” Their statements often coated in nostalgic laughter, and laced with promises of adventure, great friends, and new beginnings. But I was tricked, bamboozled really, by their glossy memories. They weren’t entirely wrong, growing up is all of those things and more - but this prompt isn’t about the things I did know, it’s about the things I didn’t, so I’ll try my best to stay on track. 

Anyways, I was always told about the good stuff. 

No one ever said that everyday I’d be met with an unexpected challenge - like the power in your apartment shutting off, trying to maintain friendships across the country, your street getting infested with rats, falling in and out of love with yourself, having to make a doctor’s appointment without sounding confused about your own reason for calling, getting a weeks worth of groceries for $20 because you spent too much money on boots, taxes, your buildings super being sorta kinda mad at you...? That last ones pretty TBD, but you get the idea.

The confusing “new-ness” intertwined with adulthood is never ending. Maybe that’s why no one prepares you for it. It’s too uncertain. Even so, the most obvious thing that no one ever said is that everyone else is growing up too. Oftentimes I’ll get so wrapped up in my own bullshit that I forgot my experiences aren’t singular. Well maybe the whole super situation is, but not having all the answers isn’t. 

Maybe I was shielded from this simplistic notion because everyone else forgot too. We lift others up while forgetting to be kind to ourselves. We idolize strangers without questioning how they’re actually doing, and compare triumphs without asking how they got there. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if someone’s at the peak of their adolescence or in their final quarter - everyone’s just trying to keep up.

So consider this a reminder to exhale. It’s okay not to know. I don’t either.