When Are You A Grown Up?

Do you ever feel like you're totally bullshitting your way through being an adult?

Like most of the time, you're just pretending to be grown up, but you pretend so much that you get so used to it, that you almost forget you're completely faking it? And then something happens. Something small and seemingly insignificant, something you've probably done several times before, and for a moment time seems to slow down, if not stop altogether, and you hear this voice in your head that says "Holy shit. I'm a grown up. How the fuck did this happen?"

It's only for a split second, and then you shake it off and go back to whatever you were doing, like making a holiday dinner for all your friends, or writing a check for a mortgage payment, or remembering to put the cap back on the fucking toothpaste.

It's weird.

At my age right now, at 25, I feel like my life is inherently and incomprehensibly different from most 25 year old girl's lives. I feel like I'm older right now, than most of the girls I know will ever be in their lives.

STILL though, I have these moments, these time stopping moments when I think "Who's idea was it to grow up?! When did this happen?"

Responsibility and maturity are weird.

When are you really, truly an adult?

Is it when you not only own a checkbook, but always know where it is, and how to actually write a check?

Is it when you start browsing online for new living room furniture more often than you browse for porn?

Is it when you can let a small child spit their gum out into your hand, or wipe their nose on your pants, or cough in your face without feeling a knee jerk instinct to throw them across the room and bathe in Lysol?

I don't know.

But today I taught my 9 year old daughter how to make Eggplant Parmesan and then I cleaned the baseboards in my kitchen.

I think I might be a grown up.

Shit.