Dear beloved readers,

I am on PMS and for God knows what damn reason I decided today would be a good day to do a juice detox and safe to say I am in a certain mood and very unpleasantly hungry so bear with me otherwise I will quit this bullshit and head straight to my kitchen to snatch some brownies I know damn well my mom made.

This week was filled with hard to swallow realizations. One of them being that I need to get my roots done ASAP, another one being that doing some icky juice diet right before getting your period is probably the dumbest idea you can possibly have, and another is that I should probably stop being so obsessed with the movie Heathers to the point that I watched it 5 times in 2019 and we are only 11 days in and bought a wig to look like Veronica Sawyer because if I keep things like that people will start to worry about me and the odd influence this movie can have. Of course there were also some much more hard to swallow realizations, like how I found myself going through this blog and rereading old posts and seeing how much of a mess I found myself being last year and how I literally said that adult life was so hard on me I missed the days of my teenage life in which I was on antidepressants and not leaving the house.

I actually need a minute before I get into how problematic that statement was, and trust me I had to read it and reread it to make sure I wasn’t just being dramatic, I actually put myself back into whatever day and situation I was when I typed those words and I came across the scary realization that I wasn’t, in the slightest, being dramatic. Which only meant that at some point in my life I was so utterly terrified of failing as an adult that I not only compared it to being a depressed teenager but I also preferred being a depressed teenager over a failure of an adult. Do you guys understand how problematic and alarming that is?

And all I could think is that it’s even more problematic that we grow up with this crazy idealization that either people shove at us or we built ourselves that life as a teenager is supposed to suck and life as an adult, a grown up is supposed to be the fucking best. So when we are in the transition from teenager to adult, you know that period of your life that you move out from your folk’s place, you get in college, perhaps you go live in a different city, country even, you get a job, you start to pay your bills, all of that, it’s a process, and when you seem like you don’t have your shit together midway through this you just kinda lose it.

I remember completely freaking out in my first week of college, that happened to also be my first week living alone, even if I had a roommate at the time I still went from having my mom there to cook and take me places and now suddenly I had to figure out how to use an oven, and it was so nerve-racking and I found myself having bad anxiety every day but not letting it show on the outside because I still needed to keep my appearances so people in college wouldn’t think I was a crybaby who couldn’t even handle being away from dearest mommy for a week. I remember losing hair and losing weight in that one endless week and even so at night being so thankful that I at least had a promising future ahead of me and in the end of the day that is really what I wanted, and both of those things are true, but the part of me that felt guilty for being anxious and unsure about this whole thing and terrified of this big new future, the part I punished and didn’t accept and didn’t allow to suffer because in my mind there was no such thing as having a hard time becoming an adult, because that is supposed to be the easy part.

So maybe someone told you this already, but if you are unfortunate like me and didn’t have this prep talk, here it goes: The transition from teenager to adult can be so fucking hard and so fucking stressful and that is completely normal. I mean how could it not? You go from school, a place in which you had to have a bathroom pass to be allowed to go to the restroom to a brand new reality in which everything is just up to you. And I mean, I can’t even buy notebooks without lines because that triggers my anxiety and OCD, and suddenly it was up to me if I wanted to go to class or not, if I wanted to go out at 3am, if I wanted to pee!?!?

I know those things seem silly but there’s so much more to it, like not doing well in college right away, not feeling like you fit right away, not getting an internship and even though you are now fully responsible for everything you still depend on your parent’s money and even though they are okay with it, everyone else who is now a much more of an adult that you are and that have their shit together way better than you do, will judge you, if not verbally, with the bitchest facial expressions ever.

I guess I am just here today to say that it’s supposed to be hard because unlike what it seems, its a hella of a step. Regardless if you went through any of the steps that I went, even if you still are at your parents and you don’t wanna go to college, adulthood is not something you get to choose if you want or not and it comes with the same pressure because even if at first it sells you the idea of a better life in which things just work, you are the one who is supposed to make them work, and to make things work you gotta do them right, and that idea, coming from someone who is so used to fucking everything up, just terrifies me somedays that I can’t even leave the bed.

So no, don’t wake up one morning as soon as you turn 18 and think “well, that is it, brand new me” because first of all that’s literally the first step of a very long road you have ahead of yourself until things truly get to that point you’ve been hearing adults brag for ages. Plus, if you are going through this along with friends and they have a different pace than you do, that is also okay because we are all different people and we take things in a different way. And even if some days you will miss the parts of your life that you hated the most because you just now realize that even if perhaps better, adulthood is fucking hard, and trust me, it is fucking hard, that is also okay, because the good thing about life is that it won’t move backwards, so remember that there’s only forward to see, to hope for, and hopefully we do learn how to do things right, even if we take our time, take deep breathes, and embrace the fact that it won’t be right away.

The minute I turned 18 I was already living by myself and was done with my first semester of college, and while I think that is a lot now that I look back at it, I still thought I was just a kid in a different address, while everyone else around me was ten, twenty steps ahead in the adulthood-road. And I was so unfair with myself through this whole process and only now, as I am almost 20, I realize that if I still have a long way to go as my almost-20-years-old-self, it was just plain stupid to expect of my just-turned-18-years-old-self to have her shit together. And now that I know that, I sleep at night in peace knowing that I will figure it out, not when everyone else do, but when I get there.

Until next week, remember to keep your pace and keep it easy and just have a blast along your way. I am the girl on the go trying to find her way, and my journey will be different than yours, and that is okay, because just like I hope you learn something along mine, I surely hope I get to learn something with you too, that of course if you stay out of trouble, but either way, I truly wanna hear all about it.