I would have loved to write that I’m all grown up and understand life. But, really, I don’t.
I will always look at life through tiny sunglasses I got from my mom when I was young. Slightly distorted and exaggerated. With the sour smell of goat milk that breathes a deep wave of nostalgia and makes everything crystal clear and honest.
I love videogames. I love a bit of adventure. I love dancing until I sweat. The smell of lukewarm sweat under my armpits. I sometimes wish there had been a few hairs there back then, something to get tangled up in. A faint cigarette smell in the back. Where the sticky, disgusting floor makes the night feel like I could become anything, or nothing at all.
But to answer your question:
You will get the adult stuff. Being a teenager is way harder, and doing taxes is okay. Clicking a few little boxes and feeling that somewhere, someone is taking me serious. It feels like I’m cosplaying a serious man for a few hours a year. And sometimes that costume feels too tight, like my weight doesn’t match my height. But I would never trade that adult costume for a teenage one. I love the strange comfort of certainty inside my uncertainty.
For me, the real growing up was not blaming my parents for everything that is wrong in my life.
And when that moment hits, you suddenly see their parents and their parents’ parents. A whole line of slightly confused human beings trying to look steady while the tectonic plates decide to shake things up. Deeply insecure fishes in a very large ocean. Quietly doubting themselves. Smiling at dinner as if they understand the roadmap, how all these different ingredients from all over the world come together looking organic in a not-so-organic way. Holding a blunted knife as if they know exactly where to cut.
There is no failing in life in the way you fear it. Because, you are alive. Out of all that dust and chaos, there was you. There was me.
The fact that we are is miraculous.
And so you keep moving. Learning one small, boring thing at a time. Filling in a tax form. Opening a bank account. Throwing away dinner because you fucked up the process. Yet laughing with great friends on a random night, and everything feels so out of place, yet so right.
And then you’ll realize:
You’ve been dancing the sweaty grown-up dance all along.
