Pretending to be an adult and being left behind
Whenever I feel like I’m failing at being an adult, I feel comforted by the fact my friends seem to feel the same. Yes, they too have left the clean washing in the machine for 2 days until it smells damp and has to be washed again. They too have come home to a fridge with no food and have cut the mould off the bread for toast.
Maybe there are no adults, and we’re all just pretending?
Except I don’t see 60 year olds with mismatched socks or nothing in to offer guests when they pop round unexpectedly.
And all these friends who do fail these ‘adulting’ tests, well it doesn’t really matter, does it? Because they’ve passed the real tests. They’re engaged or married, they’ve bought a house, or they’re having babies. The markers of adulthood, and somehow, still, success.
I made the delightfully head-in-the-clouds choice upon graduating to ‘focus on my art’, which meant proving I could be a working writer no matter how many other jobs I had to do, how many hours I had to work, things I had to say no to, or how exhausted I was. Not to mention the bad pay.
I survived as a writer. I achieved something. That was enough at twenty three. I’d written books and they’d been published and I could own my title. I was a writer. Woo hoo.
Except the student lifestyle of a barely surviving writer is fine at 23. It’s not particularly different to the life you’ve just left behind at university, except you pay council tax, have less money and rue every day that you underestimated the power of your student discount card.
But on the other side of twenty five, that life doesn’t look as peachy. Everyone else has been in their jobs a few years, they’ve got experience. They’re getting promotions and raises, they’ve got pension plans and savings accounts. They can throw away £50 on a night out because it’s fine, they’ve got it all under control. They’re building something.
I didn’t have a pension. I didn’t have savings. I lived hand to mouth and the focus was on what I made with words, not what I made to put in my bank account. I had achieved something unbelievable. But now I was so behind I was never going to catch up. I took a 9–5, something my father had been desperate for me to do for years. It was badly paid, because I had no experience, and it was mind numbingly repetitive. But it was okay, because I was writing my books.
Luckily I left that job, moved on to a better paid one that I really enjoy, and still managed to write my books. I’m learning and growing and specialising, and doing all that stuff my friends did when they first graduated. And I know I’m not supposed to regret anything, because I got to write and study and had a great time busting my arse, working three jobs and proving to anyone who gave a shit that I could do it.
But I do regret it. I regret spending money on stupid things, I regret not saving, not realising that time would move so quickly and my twenties would be over without very much to show for them.
I’m counting down to my thirtieth birthday. I’ve spent the last year saying I’m excited about it. Life has been great, it’s only getting better. Great job, love writing, wonderful friends, excellent partner. I finally moved into a flat that hasn’t got damp and mould and a drummer who plays along to Ed Sheeran at 2am downstairs. Life is good.
And yet.
30 is a precipice. Even when we know it shouldn’t be. Which might be why I’ve ended up panicked, depressed and anxious for the last couple of months. Rationally, I know the number means nothing.
And yet.
My friends have all bought houses, either off their own steam or with help from parents. I don’t have that. I didn’t start saving soon enough. Suddenly 10 years of saving for a deposit starts to look a bit grim. Getting a deposit at 40, when you have to pay it off before retirement? Damn.
It’s also fun saying ‘no’ to all the things I was saying ‘no’ to in my twenties because I couldn’t afford it, now because I’m saving for a deposit. I’m out of step with my friends once again.
Children? Well, women’s careers stop dead in their tracks when you have kids, you never recover the growth potential in your salary. So if I make more than my partner, I’m limiting our income for the foreseeable. So how will that affect our fictional future mortgage? What’s the average pay for maternity? How many months will I have to save to afford to stay off for the time I need? How will we survive?
Marriage? Why don’t we get married? That will cement our approach into adulthood.
Whether or not you believe in marriage, everyone does seem to want to congratulate you on it. I don’t know if it’s that lovely belief in proclaiming your desire to love someone for the rest of your time on earth, or because you’re grown up enough to be able to afford to feed 80 people you sort of like, but either way — adulthood marker.
So what do you do if everyone you know has suddenly grown up and you’re left behind? You look at what you’ve achieved that isn’t measured by society and give yourself a pat on the back, I guess?
You tell yourself it doesn’t matter, that buying a property is unrealistic for most people (but when you work in property every day is a reminder that you’ve clearly done something wrong) and get on with life. You remind yourself you’re not bothered by marriage, whilst looking at dresses on the internet and wondering how much a yurt costs. You approach the idea of affording a baby the way most approach making them — well, fuck it.
Millenials are constantly torn down for being weak snowflakes, for being anxious overthinkers who believe they’re entitled to what their parents’ generation had — the problem is that we’re still being measured against what our parents had and did. By the time my mother was my age she was married with her first child, and was buying her first house. It’s hard to ignore that, when every older person reminds you of your childlike state in comparison to their achievements.
We are left only a couple of options, those of us who didn’t jump on the treadmill soon enough. The artists and the masters and PhD students, and the people who took time out to be carers, or never figured out their careers, or struggled with illness or mental health…the only way to deal is to imagine we’re on a different track altogether. We’re not trailing behind in the race, so much so that everyone else is miles ahead. We’re on a different path — one that bends around time and offers surprises and opportunities for growth.
We must learn to measure our lives in the the things that matter — the moments of joy and laughter, the love of the people around us, the reaching of the goals that we set for ourselves, by choice rather than inheritance.
It doesn’t feel like much of a consolation a lot of the time, but I have a feeling once 30 has come and gone, it won’t matter quite so much. At least, that’s what I’m hoping.