Everyone talks about "growing up" like it's a destination. Like there's a point you reach where things just click, where you feel settled and sorted and like you finally know what you're doing. Nobody tells you that it keeps moving. Nobody tells you that the people who look like they have it together are mostly just better at pretending.
I turned 18 and waited to feel different. I didn't. I started making my own decisions and waited for it to feel empowering. Sometimes it did. Mostly it just felt heavy. There's a version of adulthood we're sold growing up - through films, through social media, through watching the adults around us - and then there's the actual thing. They don't match up. Not even close.
"The gap between what we're told life looks like and what it actually is - that's where most of our anxiety lives."
The script we're handed
School. Grades. University or a career. A flat. A relationship. A routine. That's the rough outline, right? And if you follow it, you're supposed to feel okay. Stable. Like you're on track. But what nobody mentions is how hollow "on track" can feel when you're doing everything right and still feel lost. Or how the pressure to hit those milestones by certain ages quietly destroys your ability to actually enjoy any of it.
I've spoken to people twice my age who still feel like they're figuring it out. Not because they failed at adulthood - because adulthood isn't a puzzle with a solution. It's just life, ongoing, with no finish line and no applause when you get something right.
What nobody actually prepares you for
The loneliness of it. Not the being-alone kind - the kind where you're surrounded by people and still feel like nobody quite gets where you're at. The fatigue of having to make decisions constantly, big and small, with no one to tell you if you're choosing right. The way your relationship with your parents shifts and you have to figure out what that even looks like now. The friendships that quietly fade because everyone's going different directions. The realisation that your mental health is entirely your responsibility to manage.
Nobody hands you a manual. And the people who should probably admit that they're also making it up as they go are too busy looking like they have it together to say so.
So what do we do with that?
Honestly? I don't have a neat answer. I started this podcast partly because I kept needing to say these things out loud and hear other people say them back. There's something that loosens in your chest when someone who seems sorted admits they're not. When the older person you look up to says "yeah, I still don't fully know what I'm doing either."
Adulthood isn't a state you arrive at. It's just a long series of days where you try to do your best with what you've got. The sooner we stop performing the version of it we think we're supposed to be living, the sooner we can actually get on with it.
That's the reality check.