Written by Steven Schumaker —
We are kind of thrown into adulthood. We all have different situations, obviously. We all come from different places, different backgrounds, so when somebody gets mad at you for complaining about something that happened to you that you think was rough, you won’t understand why.
The answer is we are only used to what we are around, we are used to our level of class. We may all be in the middle class but there’s different levels inside this middle class.
We only know rough when it comes to what we have been through; not all of us have been homeless or abused or bullied or contemplated suicide but we are all human and, for the majority of us, we have feelings and emotions. Of course, there are some stupid reasons for complaining — I’m talking about the things that put us far down into our pits of depression.
We can get mad at each other but how long is that going to last? You will push away the people wanting to help you and when you realize they left you, will only sink down more.
We are thrown into adulthood with ease. Thrown out to survive, sometimes with help, we look up at the sky wondering “how will I get through this?”
I’m not talking about “god,” I’m talking about daydreams. Daydreams that take us from the reality we know and into a world of timeless events that make us happy.
The transition back into “reality ” is a very difficult thing to accomplish when we spend hours and days digging into the back of our brain and inner deepest thoughts making up stories and memories that don’t exist to anyone but ourselves. We lose our minds, give ourselves up to anyone and everyone we desire in our thoughts. We come back to “reality,” back to school or work looking at everyone and everything differently.
As we grow up, we give ourselves thoughts of adulthood. When we get closer to adulthood, we realize how screwed we are — like Icarus flying too close to the sun — the sun being adulthood (taxes, bills, business, money, etc.) and us being the wax of the wings barely holding on. We set our minds up to believe everything is easy and then when we fail, we don’t know who to blame but others, until we get hard on ourselves.
Adulthood doesn’t even necessarily mean being 18 or 21 — it means we are mature and have an idea of the hardships that we and others around us are going through. Adulthood is when we finally detach from false reality, not completely, but enough where we can figure out what the hell is going on in the world around us.
You can be 41 and still have yet to enter adulthood. Something tragic happens to us and we realize how easy stuff happens: adulthood was thrown on us. We screw up really bad and get punished in many ways — that can be a form of adulthood being thrown at us.
Sometimes little bits and flashes go by us and sometimes a giant-ass boulder hits us straight in the head, gut or worse — heart.
School doesn’t fully prepare us for the war called adulthood. We learn possible career paths, sure, but we all know we don’t care about ninety percent of it. We have to learn mostly from our parents but maybe we don’t have reliable parents or any parents at all. Then, we are left to figure it out on our own.
In a lot of cases we are afraid to accept help and handouts. Sometimes, that reluctance is due to thinking we are better than that, or we think we can do it on our own, or we just straight hate the thought of being a charity case.
I don’t know who you are or what you do but I can say we all need help with something, big or small, at some points in our life. Accept the help, get yourself together and pay the person back when you can. Maybe even help another out.
Do your best to handle adulthood however that may be; we all have to go through it at some point. Just pay more attention and try not to get hit in the head with a big-ass boulder.
Steven Schumaker is a junior at Yosemite High School.
