I'm Only Here for the WiFi (18 page)

The most obvious places to start when looking for burgeoning adulthood and quantifiable maturity are clearly in arenas like the professional. We all need a job of some kind, and what exactly society has deemed you worthy of doing for monetary compensation is a pretty visible defining factor. We have a tendency, whether we actively do it or not, to place a higher social premium on jobs that pay better, are more difficult to land, generally take place in an office setting, and often require you to dress in a way that can only be described as “business casual.” Yes, it is wrong to unilaterally say that these people are more “grown up” than someone who works in, say, a restaurant, but this is often the way people are going to judge you.

Or they might look at where you live. They will take a look at your apartment—where it's located, how much graffiti is on the subway station or bus stop nearest your house, how much of the
furniture came from a garage sale—and make assumptions about who you are as a person. They might feel envious of your decorating skills, or curious as to how you got a place in such a prime yet not incredibly noisy location, or smugly superior about living in a place they deem so much better, depending on the kind of place you're staying in. There will even be people who are big enough delusional douchebags to think that your zip code defines you, that it puts some invisible checkmark next to the word
cool
floating above your head.

And there is always who you are dating, a signifier of achievement unmatched by nearly anything else, especially among women. Whether we like it or not, we are told since we are old enough to idolize a Disney princess that a huge amount of our worth is going to be wrapped up in whether or not some investment banker with good taste in blazers rides up on a white horse covered in money and compliments and sweeps us off our feet. We are bombarded by messages every day—from the magazine covers we pass in the grocery store to our own concerned family members—who want to know if we're dating someone and, if so, how well it is going. For many people, dating in the twenties becomes nothing short of some bizarre Japanese game show that leads up to marriage. It's just a series of hilarious trials and tribulations that, unless ending in universal approval and a sizable diamond, will be considered by some to be worthless. Some people are going to openly judge you based on what your dating
status is, and it's hard to avoid them on sight alone. For nearly every life choice you make as an adult, you'll encounter someone passive-aggressively telling you that it isn't good enough.

Perhaps one of the best antidotes in your own life, though, is to start actively trying to think about people (and the level of “adulthood” you would give them on some imaginary scale) in terms of emotional maturity. While certain people well into middle age and beyond have the emotional development of a petulant child, and seem to fly through life with complete disregard to things as insignificant and cumbersome as “other people's feelings,” that is no reason not to aspire to greater things ourselves. Undoubtedly, you'll find people in your group of friends, in your family, in your inner circle, whom you would consider to be “better people” than most. They listen, they keep their promises, they know how to apologize, and they are generally respectful of other people's humanity. No matter what these people are doing in their lives professionally, or how far along they are on their journey to purchasing a two-bedroom apartment in a desirable part of the city, they have something to actually be proud of about their progress as a human being.

And the patience we have for people who are not interested in being thoughtful or respectful diminishes—or at least should diminish—as we age. To be perfectly frank, at a certain point, it just gets fucking exhausting to hang out with people who aren't stepping their game up at least slightly when it comes to how
they treat those around them. There is only so much we can associate with people who are jealous, or irresponsible, or judgmental, or angry, before we start becoming those things ourselves. And it's undeniable that friendships with people whom you can trust implicitly, who you know like you for who you are and not some janky notion of social obligation, are way more enjoyable to have around. It's just nice knowing that you can relax and be yourself around people, and the people who exude this kind of “I'm not an uptight asshole” vibe tend to attract better people.

Why isn't there more of an emphasis placed on how we're evolving when we interact with one another? With the difficulty everyone is having in finding the professional success we once naively hoped to be entirely defined by, you would hope that breaking up with someone in a more intelligent, caring manner at twenty-five than you did at fifteen would be a milestone that is much appreciated, if not rewarded with financial compensation. No one is saying that we need to go from cripplingly petty to a sexier combination of Gandhi and John Lennon overnight, but if we're not aiming for self-improvement, what are we doing? There are few things more frustrating than seeing people who, despite any leaps they may be making in the rest of their lives, are still living out the same patterns emotionally that they've been in since adolescence. It is worse, of course, when we are doing it ourselves.

I often catch myself, as I imagine many of us do, in a moment of emotional immaturity that reminds me of just how much
growing lies ahead of me. I'll be having an argument with someone and I'll be quick to speak before I think about how much shit what I'm saying will get me into, or I'll say something hurtful just because I feel wronged myself and want to get a cheap shot in to feel as if I'm getting even. It's stupid, and I know it is, but sometimes I can't help it. And then I'll have a hard time mustering up a legitimate apology because I still have a massive chip on one of my shoulders that is constantly whispering into my ear, “You don't need to say sorry to this bitch, you are flawless, don't even worry about it.” No matter how much I'm achieving in any other aspect of my life, knowing that I'm still capable of treating people like an impatient, selfish child when it suits me reminds me that, in many ways, I am still very much using the training wheels on my independence.

But to recognize these moments, to say to myself,
Hey, this is shitty, and I should stop being such a shitty person right now,
is already a more adult move than I was ever prepared to make in the past. I look back on eighteen-year-old Chelsea—whose life was pretty much a series of shenanigans and hijinks in which I inserted my foot ever more violently into my mouth and dated guys who enjoyed treating me like something recently scraped off the bottom of their shoe—and feel secure in the knowledge that I am treating everyone better now, including myself. No matter how criminally underrated it may be, this respectful and thoughtful treatment of yourself is perhaps the first real step to
making constructive emotional choices. You're never going to wake up magically one day and think,
I'm gonna stop hanging out with people who make me feel like a leper and maybe start building constructive friendships with people who are kind to me
unless you believe that you're the kind of person who deserves it.

At the risk of sounding like a wall hanging your grandmother needlepointed for you, feeling that you deserve it is probably the biggest component of all this. Because there is only so much success you're going to achieve in any area of your life if you don't think you're a good person who is worthy or capable of any of the things you're doing. (Except maybe in the professional arena, since I've met several people who work in finance whom I could only describe as dead behind the eyes, but they make a fuck-ton of money, so good for them.) For most of us normals, however, feeling sincerely as though we are cool, interesting, good people we would want to hang out with if given the choice is a pretty essential component of growing up, it would seem.

We've all met people who ooze confidence, and not in that dicky way that gives the distinct impression that they like the smell of their own farts more than anyone should. These people just seem genuinely happy with themselves, even if they wear clothes that other people consider goofy-looking or aren't super-attractive or don't make a ton of money. They are generally cool to be around because their confidence and self-assuredness is a kind of port in a never-ending storm of “Is what I'm doing okay??? Do you like
this???” that we're bombarded with from the vast majority of our friends and social media. It has a tendency to rub off on people when you're just incredibly happy with yourself and don't really need anyone's approval. (Ironically enough, it tends to be the people who aren't terribly caught up in what others think of them who end up getting the most respect and admiration.)

The truth is, that no matter how much you feel as if you and only you are a giant fuckup and everyone else around you is laughing and dancing as romantic success and hundred-dollar bills rain down on them, everyone is confused. I don't know a single person in my life—no matter how successful in any given aspect of her life—who feels as though she's got everything on lock and is now putting life on autopilot and coasting through until she reaches a perfectly contented death somewhere in old age. And even the people who have somehow mastered several important things in life all at once and find themselves with relatively few logistical problems are then presented with the existential meltdown that is “Am I becoming boring?” In a way, the thrill of being unsure about things is so much of what we love; it's hard not to get at least a little contact high out of feeling like everything ahead of you is open and unknown.

Speaking personally, I was never a confident person growing up. It usually happens that way when you're awkward-looking with braces and cystic acne and a weird sense of humor and glasses in a shape so unflattering that selling them to unsuspecting young
tweens should be a crime—you're not terribly well-liked. You don't get to feel enormously good about yourself. It's hard, especially for people who grow up feeling that they're unpopular or that they don't have a distinct place in life, to ease into an adulthood where they genuinely feel that they're carving out the life they want to be living.

For me, and I'm sure for many others, choosing to see the good parts of yourself and think more about what you're doing well and what is within your control to change rather than languishing over how tragically uncool or unsuccessful you are is not an easy thing to do. It's so much more natural to pick on yourself, to see all the things you are not measuring up in, to watch your friends doing things with their lives you are terribly envious of or scared by and wonder why your life is not moving in a similar direction.

But at a certain point, constantly picking on yourself and thinking about how you are not good enough is just exhausting. I could spend all day browsing through Facebook and counting the times I see someone I miss who doesn't care about me, or someone whose life I wish I had. I could do what I have almost always done, which is think about what part of me isn't pretty or smart or growing up quickly enough. I could think about where everyone is, as if we're all running some kind of hundred-yard dash and place myself directly in front of or behind people, depending on how much money we make or whom we're dating. And I've done that; I think we all have. We're not getting grades
anymore. We're not all living together. We're not hanging out in the same social circles—we have to have some rubric to measure ourselves against.

I have tried, though, in the past year or so, to remind myself of the things I do well in life, of what I can be proud of, even if someone else doesn't think it's impressive enough. I make lists of the things I don't like in my life, things that I can change, and I work on them. I try to pay bills as efficiently as I can, and work hard, and be comfortable in what I've achieved at the end of each day. And I try, most of all, to be a little easier on myself. I will never be as pretty or as rich or as well-liked as someone else, and there is nothing wrong with that. As much as these messages of self-love have become cloying platitudes, there really is nothing truer. Being kind and patient with yourself is a choice you can make every day, and when you make it, you realize that every other aspect of your life—from getting that promotion to meeting the kind of people you want to surround yourself with—becomes, as if by magic, just that much easier.

Maybe that is what makes you an adult more than anything else in your life. To look at what you're doing and honestly say, “I am trying my hardest and being kind to people, and I like who I am” is something that so many people—regardless of where society might place them on any number of scales—cannot say about themselves. You can list a million reasons not to feel like a grown-up yet, to feel like you have so far to go and so much to
prove to everyone before you can kick back and feel like the master of any kind of domain. But to make the choice every day to take responsibility for what you can change, to decide that you are not going to bullshit your way through with whiny diatribes about how it's everyone else's fault and never your own (which I must cop to having done for an extended period of time), or how you are never going to be as good as this or that person so why even try, seems like a pretty good place to start.

You could always be doing something better, and there will always be someone you're slightly envious of. And until you reach whatever imagined plateau of “My life is awesome and perfect and impervious to criticism,” you're just going to have to deal with that. (Spoiler alert: You're probably going to die before you ever reach that plateau.) If you can do one favor for yourself, and put one checkmark in the “mature” column for yourself, let it be realizing that just because one friend has a better job, or another one is getting married, or your ex has moved on before you, you are not a worthless child who doesn't deserve the lofty title of “young adult.” You're just figuring it out with the rest of us, and this isn't some county fair contest called Who Can Construct a Nuclear Family in under Five Years Out of College. It's called Life, and you are going to be playing it for the next several decades at least, so you might want to pace yourself on the “I am an unequivocal failure who doesn't deserve to take up space in this coffee shop” front. I promise you're doing much better than you think.