A letter from one struggling adult to the other
Heeeeyyy youuuuu,
We haven’t spoken in a while. Ohkayy, I mean, I stayed silent for a while. What can I say, juggling between this, that, and those, I kind of lost the importance of speaking to you.
Oh boy, dint I miss it, now that I am dancing in the white garden with the strokes of black.. I am realizing how much I missed it. Well, let’s not get into dancing, maybe I will get lost in that again.
Between living life and figuring it out, I just realized the unspoken struggle that I am going through. The word “struggle” did pierce me for a while (ermm, maybe a little longer than a while), and the more I sat with it, the more it started to make sense. I had to take out the holy book of Sreejos survival and go through everything I have written and documented. The strategies to get through tough situations, urge surfing, acknowledging the waves of emotions, etc., etc., etc., and guess what, I found myself more lost than before.
I sat with that for a while, documented everything about NOW, and closed it.
Then, I sat in my balcony, sitting there, not sipping anything but staring into the sky… thinking,
Will I ever have things figured out?
Honest question, right?
Do you have this question too? Or you have everything figured out already? If you did, please please please, let’s have a discussion. I would loveeee to learn more.
Oh also, you can stop reading now. This is not for you.
And you, who is still reading?
It is overwhelming at times, isn’t it?
I don’t know the questions you are sitting with right now. Maybe your career, relationship, family, politics, heat wave, or even “are there aliens amongst us?”
As someone in my mid-thirties, I thought I would have things figured out by now.
The funniest thing is that I never defined things. Therefore, my hope for certainty began with uncertainty.
Is it the same for you too?
What a weird feeling it is.
You are lost, and you start fighting… with everything you know.
You wake up and decide, whatever it is… and I am me… I got this.
So you put in the effort.
Effort you are proud of.
A quantifiable outcome.
Then you’re calm again.
Greens are peaceful.
Birds are flying.
Life suddenly feels manageable.
And just because you are happy, you decide,
“Ey… let’s be adults. Let’s try figuring it out.”
Tadaaaa…
There are humans.
The supercomputers.
The ones who seem to know exactly what they are doing and the ones who don’t even question anything.
They have five-year plans and the ones who aint even hopeful,
Investment portfolios vs the kids I might have,
Children planned without whys and whats,
Perfect family stories.
Meanwhile, me thinking of myself in the grocery store in the afternoon, wondering why I walked into an aisle looking for something to realize that I was looking for a protein pudding.
Crazy wierd world bruh, suddenly the mere urge to have conversations becomes a luxury.
You become a commodity that is appreciated before people have access to you, celebrated while they have your attention, and somehow doesnt even note your presense, which indeed is a luxury for YOU yourself as you.
And somewhere between being useful and being available…
…you slowly stop being present with yourself.
That is the strange part of adulthood no one warned us about.
It isn’t paying taxes.
Or doing laundry.
Or trying to cook every day.
It is carrying questions that refuse to become answers.
Every time I think I have finally understood life, life politely smiles and says,
“Cute. Here’s another chapter.”
Maybe that is why everyone seems like they have it together.
Because admitting “I don’t know” somehow became embarrassing.
When did that happen?
When did uncertainty become a flaw instead of evidence that we’re still growing?
I used to think adulthood was an arrival.
Now I think it is just becoming comfortable with constantly arriving.
Maybe we were never supposed to have everything figured out.
Maybe we were only supposed to keep figuring ourselves out.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Because every version of you solves the problems of yesterday only to meet questions that might occur tomorrow.
Perhaps certainty was never the destination.
Perhaps curiosity was.
So, if today you are sitting on your own metaphorical balcony, staring at a sky that refuses to answer back…
Know this.
Someone else is staring at another sky or imagining it, asking almost the exact same question.
Maybe that’s adulthood.
Not knowing.
Trying anyway.
Laughing in between.
Crying when needed.
Calling your therapist.
Ignoring your therapist.
Writing letters you’ll probably never send.
Replying messages that you never expected in the first place.
Starting over on a random midnight.
And somehow…
Still believing that tomorrow deserves another chance.
If you ask me today whether I have things figured out…
No.
Not even close.
But maybe that isn’t failure anymore.
Maybe that is just being beautiful, unapologetically human.
Until next time,
– One struggling adult to another.
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