I'm Trying To Figure Out How To Deal With Adulthood

On finally becoming a Real Adult, Linda Gregg, and seeking pleasure in the lukewarm waters of daily life

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A post shared by Jamie Bennett (@sunlightafterdark)

I have struggled to put a coherent thought down on paper since the moment I returned from Medellin a few months ago (March 27th, 2023, 11:01 p.m. local time.)

This is the way it always goes: I leave for Colombia on a moment’s notice, compelled by a force that I can only describe as nostalgia for a time characterized by searing passion. When I come back, I am a fundamentally different person. The atoms of my essence have shifted like Tetris cubes in their matrix; my brain chemistry is altered; an ancient crack in my heart splinters through my cardiac cavities by another hair’s breadth. I return with the taste of nectar ripe and sweet on my tongue. I promise myself that I will visit again for another taste as soon as possible.

This time is no different, except for this time, I have a life to live beyond the confines of my own nostalgia. I’m not salivating at the promise of my eventual return to the tropics. Instead, I’m trying my hardest to remain present in the current reality that is this: finally, at the tender age of 28, I’m trading in my unfettered and peripatetic lifestyle for one of rooted stability.

I have long dreaded this moment (and trust me, I’ve been putting it off for years): the one in which I look around and realize that am now A Real Adult. What I mean by that is that I finally live in my own apartment, I have a pretty decent job, and I keep consistent habits like running and cooking and cleaning and paying my credit card bill on time. Don’t get me wrong—doing these Adult Things is not without their own flavor of passion, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t grateful for them. But I’d also be lying if I said that I think a life involving things like exercising and eating well and maintaining a gratitude journal is by any means worth writing novels about.

Still, a life characterized by stability needs exactly that: daily routines, healthy habits, structure, consistency. I guess I could say that I’m trying to rediscover the pleasure in the lukewarm waters of the day-to-day, but this is difficult for someone who is best described as a heat-seeking missile.

This all sounds terribly dramatic, and I understand that a sob story about post-tropical vacation depression is bound to elicit a few eye rolls. But both the emotional depletion and physical exhaustion I’ve experienced in these last few weeks are proof that the cognitive dissonance between what is real (my Adult Life) and what my brain wants to believe is real (the possibility of living in a constant state of ecstasy) is bleeding me dry. And so I stomp around my apartment, arranging furniture and washing coffee cups and answering work emails and asking myself: “There’s got to be more to life than this, right?”

* * *

As I get older, I wrestle with an accelerating fear that time is slipping past me like sand through my fingers. This fear tells me that the presence of mundanity—a telltale sign that I am unquestionably living as an Adult—is proof that I’m wasting my life away. I suppose this means I’ve equated adulthood with a fundamental lack of thrill. It also means that I’ve spent a lot of my recent days in a bad mood.

It makes sense. The number of novelties we experience gets lower as we age, simply because we’ve seen a lot of this stuff before. Experiences like traveling and meeting people from across the world invite fresh opportunities for exhilaration into the fold, but I find that our society’s obsession with routine and structure impair our ability to even microdose those types of thrill-inducing encounters in our daily lives.

Can exhilaration find its place adulthood, too? I want to believe it does. I’m not arguing that adults live their lives entirely devoid of passion; we have our hobbies and weekend trips, our friends and our fun little dates. What I think is missing from Adult Life is that pulse of adrenaline you feel when you realize you are experiencing something that can only be experienced beyond the confines of the day-to-day. These experiences are inconveniently hard to put into words, but I think you know what I’m getting after. I know that I’m not the only one who feels this way, nor am I the only one who ever has—I’m thinking of Virginia Woolf, who once wrote of her “deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.” The melancholy of adulthood is so profound because of its inarticulateness. We are craving something we cannot fully explain—and that we may never be able to fully experience ever again.

“Cecilia, why don’t you just stop complaining and pack your stuff and move to Colombia?” you may be asking. That’s a great question. I’ve been asking myself the same thing for years. But I think I finally have the answer, and it’s because I know that even if I were to do something like that, I’d still be grappling with an inconvenient truth: I’m just going to keep getting older (universe willing). I’ll be forced into the wide-open arms of adulthood, no matter where I run off to. The older I get, the more interested I will become in preserving my own longevity instead of being young and stupid. This process will be even more painful if I do it in a place where I am constantly confronted with the memories of a more youthful era.

There is probably no better poem that captures this exact sentiment than “Adult” by Linda Gregg. It goes like this:

I’ve come back to the country where I was happy
changed. Passion puts no terrible strain on me now.
I wonder what will take the place of desire.
I could be the ghost of my own life returning
to the places I lived best. Walking here and there,
nodding when I see something I cared for deeply.
Now I’m in my house listening to the owls calling
and wondering if slowly I will take on flesh again.

So, where do I go from here? I don’t want to spend the rest of my adult life echoing Virginia Woolf, and I don’t want to give into the conformity of the day-to-day, either.

I haven’t yet reached the point where I can say “passion puts no terrible strain on me now.” It still does, and I hope it always will. But I can say that I’m in my house listening to the owls calling and wondering if slowly I will take on flesh again.