Attempting Adulthood

I once read a tweet saying that it was strange to enter adulthood having suffered with mental illness throughout your teen years, because you suddenly realise that you have decided to stick around and you’re totally responsible for your own life. This is not to say that I never intended to make it into adulthood, but now I’m here, the sentimet definitely resonates with me.

This summer, despite the challenges I faced at university, I completed my BA, and moved out of my parent’s home for the first real time. I moved from Oxford to Cardiff, a much further distance than when I moved to Winchester for uni – and that barely counted with the amount that I was able to still see my parents. For the first time in my life, I was supposed to be attempting real adulthood: paying taxes and working a proper job. Yet I found myself unemployed, spending the lazy summer days lounging in sun-spots and sleeping until the afternoon. For a while it was blissful. I was settling in, preparing myself for the “real world”, taking holidays with my parents and my boyfriend’s family.

But the honeymoon phase wears off. Unemployment began to drag, and my nice new flat started to feel like a cage. Getting a job brought freedom, financial stability, and my mental health improved once again. Yet I still feel a sense of discontent with adulthood. Maybe it is because I didn’t think I’d get this far, or maybe I’m just struggling to find my feet in this word, but nothing could have prepared me for the leap from the comparative comforts of higher education into true adulthood. It has brought a sense of sadness, as I struggle to determine what emotions are a result of being mentally ill, and what is a by-product of being an adult. It saddens me that maybe the two must go hand in hand.

I’m learning to pare down my life – to find comfort in the small things that make me happy, and to enjoy what I do, whatever that may be. To remember that it’s okay if all that gets done of a day is to drink a coffee and get the laundry done. There is no handbook for how to be an adult, no (real) rules about what we should spend our time doing, there is only an attempt, with every day, or hour, maybe even each breath, to continue to exist and be content.