A Letter To My Children: On Adulting

Lainie and Jackson.

You are both so cute, and still so little.

Almost 10 and half way through 5, you both have the wildest ideas of what being a grown up is like.

You talk about it like it will be the best thing ever, like you'll be large and in charge, like you'll have it all figured out and all the best come backs for bullies and great shoes and no one can tell you that you've had enough ice cream.

This is all true, sort of, but it's true in the way "It's a free country, I can do what I want" is true.

There's downsides, consequences, and bad days.

There are responsibilities and chores and something you're forgetting every time you leave the house.

No one really prepared me for all this when I was your ages....or ever, really, so I would like to impart some knowledge that I wish had been given to me at some point:

 

There will be days, once you're an adult, where you feel like an absolute fucking fraud.

Like you're wearing your mother's heels and pearls, playing dress up.

You won't feel like an adult yet, but you'll be standing in front of all kinds of grown up shit that people think you're capable of handling.

You'll think to yourself on those days "How did this happen? When did people decide I was a grown up? Whose fucking mistake it this?!"

You will feel it when you take NyQuil later than you should and sleep through you're alarm, waking up only when your boss calls to find out where the fuck you are.

You will feel it when you run out of gas, even though the little gas light had been on for days, and you just kept saying "I'll stop for gas after this errand" and then after said errand, thinking "fuck it, I'll do it later, I'm exhausted."

You'll feel it the first time you send your kid to school with a Lunchable because remembering to buy bread just doesn't seem to be something your brain has the capacity to do right now.

You will feel it when you have more pizza boxes and wine bottles in the trash than vegetable containers {don't do that}.

There will be hard days.

Really hard days.

There will even be weeks or sometimes months, where the hours in the day and the shit you need to do, and the amount of people counting on you just don't balance out.

You'll think "I can't do this. My life is a mess. I'm a mess. I am failing. I'm a shitty adult."

The truth is, you might be a shitty adult and your life might be a mess, but more than likely you're really not, or if you are, it's temporary.

You'll struggle sometimes, but the important thing is to keep trying.

Keep trying to keep your shit together, and eat more vegetables.

Remember, every time you fail you most likely did not invent that mistake. Someone else likely made it before you, and {hopefully} fucked it up even worse than you did.
But for the days when nothing goes right, and you feel like the absolute worst version of yourself, remember that a clean pair of underpants and a snack covered in cheese can do wonders for your outlook.

Keep going.
Keep failing.
Keep trying.