Grownup

When I was younger, my brother and I shared a bunk bed. Rather than a place for sleeping, the bed usually served as a jungle gym, a rocket ship, or one of many other scenarios that we imaginatively created.

Despite mom and dad's constant warnings against playing on the top bunk, the thought of climbing that bright red metal ladder was, more often than not, too tempting to resist. The top offered so many exciting experiences like pretending to "walk" on the ceiling, dangling our action figures perilously over the edge of the "cliff," and, of course, jumping to the floor below.

Nevertheless, our parents insisted that we were to never play on the top bunk "unless an adult was in the room."

One evening, when my Aunt Stephanie was visiting, my brother and I seized the opportunity to lure her into our room and begin playing on the top bunk. Her presence, we assumed, made playing up top fair game. Before long, my mom came in, hand on hip and eyebrows raised, "What are you two doing?"

"Aunt Steffy's a dote!" I responded in our defense.

If only it were that simple. If only my childlike definition of adulthood were the whole picture. If only adulthood were marked simply by the fact that you surpassed a certain age threshold.

But adulthood is far more complicated and difficult and unlike anything I've ever had to do.

Being an adult is working full-time and taking night classes and laughing when people say things like "when you have free time." Being an adult is going to Walmart at two in the morning to get your wife cough medicine. It's sitting up with her into the early hours of the morning laughing and crying and discussing the future as unsettling as it may be.

Being an adult is missing your best friend's birthday party because you have to work and you can't afford to lose the hours. It's having a panic attack in the driveway because you're so overwhelmed with stress that you can't bring yourself to go inside.

Being an adult is saying "I'm doing well" when people ask how you are, although it couldn't be further from the truth.

Being an adult is finding out that you're going to be a father, that you're going to have a child when you secretly still feel like a child yourself.

I wish it could be as simple as I once imagined it to be. I wish my childhood perception of being an "a dote" aligned with what I now have come to understand as true adulthood, but it's not.

Growing up, I was told in school, at church, at home...everywhere that I was bring prepped to make that headstrong leap into adulthood. Looking back, I realize how misguided that notion is.

Adulthood isn't a state of mind or a chronological place in your timeline. It's a choice to set difficult goals and achieve them, to swallow the stress and the anger and the sadness and grow more than you ever thought you could, work harder than you ever thought you could, and become more than you ever thought you could be.

Growing up is hard, hard stuff. But it's worth it.