know the feeling

Sometimes I forget that I am an adult now. Adult in the sense that other adults will look at me and expect me to think adult thoughts and act adult acts.

So many times in the past few months, I have stood and sat, surrounded by scholars and artists and authors, or at least adults with secure jobs and families and cars and booked vacations, all very much adults--them with wine glasses, me usually clutching something like my planner or my kleenex or sometimes the wine bottle (if I'm on duty)--and I laugh with them, I talk with them... Try to talk with them... I ask and answer questions about living. About being an adult.

And then I run home. Run in my too-big flats and my rain coat because it is so weirdly cold outside for April. I run home and a take a too-large amount of something out of my shelf in the fridge (tonight: grapes) and then go upstairs (no longer running, out of breath) and I take off all constrictive clothing and I flop onto my bed and I watch ridiculous shows and eat my snacks and feel guilty because I shouldn't be eating at all or sometimes I paint my nails or play that one spelling game I really like on my phone.

Is this being an adult?

Sometimes I hide from the other adults. Especially the ones who are so much better at being an adult than I am. Sometimes I choose to stay out of the circle. The stress of being an adult for the first time, and the fear that I will somehow permanently break myself via social interaction, is sometimes positively too much. I've had to talk to people with letters after their names about this. My self-confidence isn't strong. I want to hide in any one of my childhood bedrooms with my princess books and my art supplies and I want to not be called upon for wit or wisdom. It was so much easier to be one of the kids with abnormally high reading levels than it is to be one of the adults with an odd degree and confusion about the future, temporarily stranded in the working forces' no-man's-land, seemingly always texting my mom because she's the only person that keeps up with me on a daily basis.

But I can't give up now. Not with so much left to do and no time left to be not-an-adult.

I was told once, by someone who has been an adult for longer than me, that adulthood comes when you are standing in the crisps aisle and know full well that you could buy as many Pringles as you want, and then you could get married to whoever you want, and no one could stop you. I've reached that point. I don't love Pringles, so I might not get any... But standing in the aisle must count for something.