FECK OFF ADULTHOOD, I’M TOO YOUNG FOR THIS SHIT

Same as it ever was…

I dunno about you lot, but even though I’ve been a legal adult since I was 18, I didn’t feel anywhere remotely NEAR the concept of adulthood until about 12 years later. And even then, I had everything completely arseways. Not much has changed in that regard, bless my cotton / lycra blend mismatched socks.

These days, as I stare down the rusty barrel of my late thirties, I can’t help but feel like there’s been some kind of terrible, irreversible mistake. I’m too young to be my age! I still eat cake for dinner sometimes, for feck sake.

I have my own apartment and I’m lucky enough to be able to live on my own, which is fantastic. Not least because I don’t have anyone in my immediate vicinity with whom to compare levels of maturity. I’d probably be a hell of a lot more put-together if I had a housemate, lest they find out how bad I am at Adulting and try to get the authorities involved. As it stands, when I think about how I live in an apartment by myself, it’s less Carrie Bradshaw in Sex And The City and more Kevin McAllister in Home Alone.

I worry that my failure to be good at regular, everyday Adulting will impact on future relationships – particular if, by some sort of cosmic miracle, I end pairing off with a mature responsible male who’s WAY better at being a grown-up than me. Highly unlikely, but if God ever fancied making my life into a sitcom, then this would be the way to do it. The only way I cope with being the actual age I am is to wear my adulthood as a disguise, to be removed once the need for doing grown-up stuff subsides.

So, yeah. To me, Adulting feels like an outer persona I adopt, like some sort of very immature, developmentally arrested not-so-superhero. Instead of rescuing damsels in distress, my adult alter-ego pops up to rescue me from homelessness and starvation by paying my rent and doing my Big Shop online. It also saves me from my fucked-up brain chemistry by obtaining my prescription and filling it faster than a speeding bullet – most of the time. I also have an inner arch-nemesis who attacks me on that front, but that’s another blog post for another day. I’m not gonna lie guys, it’s pretty busy in the Brain of J-Ro.

I’m so bad at doing the essential run-of-the-mill grown-up stuff, that when I have to dip my toes into that dark serious world, it feels like a fucking novelty. Going to the Post Office to post a letter or some sort of important paperwork on time gives me the kind of rush usually reserved for someone on a bag of yokes at a 3-day rave. Paying my rent on time makes me positively ecstatic. Who needs great sex when you can cast your eyes around a spotless kitchen that smells of synthetic lemon-scented antibacterial wipes? NOT ME. Walking into my bedroom at the end of a long day pretending to be responsible and capable in the world, only to find that while getting into character, Adult Jen had made the bed and fluffed my pillows, nearly made me faint with joy.

There is a lot of comfort in knowing that many of my friends are the exact same. There’s certain people in my life who have a WAY better adult outer persona than Yours Truly; some of them even have mortgages, kids and full-time jobs. To be fair, I’m only barely disguising my complete and utter ineptitude at dealing with grown-up stuff; my hobo soul and pie-in-the-sky dreams of being a published author mean there’s a limit as to how much I’m actually fooling anyone. But when I get together with these friends, it’s game over for Real Life. Remember that terrifying scene in the movie of The Witches when they all remove their disguises once the doors are locked to reveal their true horrendous selves? It’s kind of like that, but instead of peeling off faces, the geeky sci-fi t-shirts emerge, the makeup gets theatrical, the in-jokes from years back are recited, the workday alarms are turned off. It’s like we’re The Goonies, but now we have the financial means and the legal age to get away with all the mad shit we really wanted to do when we were younger. My friends are the best.

Just wanted to put this in because THIS MOVIE IS AWESOME

However, this doesn’t stop the sneaky feeling that one day the other shoe will drop, and the Adulting Police will find me. Some fuddy-duddy funsucker will dial the Confidential Anti-Craic Hotline, drop my name, then my days will be numbered. I’ll be in the middle of eating cold pizza for breakfast on a Thursday morning while nursing a bastard gin hangover, and they’ll come crashing through the door, armed with brochures for sensible savings plans and some beige tapered-leg slacks with an elasticated waistband. They will use the best of technology to remove all traces of irony from all the Adulting Things I’ve been doing so I do them pure seriously. Through re-education, they will turn me into someone who is Genuinely Concerned about things like sticking to my weekly unit allowance for alcohol, and if I’m getting enough Folic Acid in my diet.

That day may come, readers. But I’m not going down without a fight. There’s too much gin, too much future regret over sent messages, and too much tattoo ink left in the world for me to surrender just yet. So onward we march, all us adult-looking fuckers who can now afford time-wise and money-wise to really appreciate what it’s like to be still full of the joys of the world and everything good in it.

Youth is wasted on the young? Fuckaway out of it. You haven’t met MY people….