To all the kids trapped in an adult’s body

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It has been roughly four years since I have been a legal adult. But, even now, nothing has ever made me feel like one. It is not like I don’t have adult responsibilities or make adult choices; it is more like even when I do such things I always feel like a kid placed in an adult world, attempting to act like one.

I cannot count the number of times I have done something super adult-ish, and the kid inside me starts to scream, “Did you really do that!?” Growing up has always been a game of trial and error, and in my case, I really don’t know if I have leveled up yet. Sure my body tells me that there is nothing more to grow, but my little mind is still stuck in her school days.

I always thought my love for learning was its own means to an end. But now I know, being a student is just my way to slow down the process of growing up as much as I can. Sure, the responsibilities keep building up, but there is always room for error.

I cannot explain how much becoming an employed person petrifies me. What if I say something stupid? What if I make the biggest blunders possible? The risk of damage against the scope of trial and error is so bleak that sometimes I just wish to crawl up into a ball and zone civilization out of my head.

And then come people my age, who have been working for at least a year now. I wonder what the workspace does to them, but I have seen all my working counterparts to be way more cautious and skeptical of the world around them.

Is this what losing one’s childhood feels like? Viewing the world as a game of chess, each part plays its role with no scope for error, lest you lose! If yes, then boy I am not ready.

But then, I also see kids younger than me, making way more mature choices in life, handling adult responsibilities like a pro. I wonder if their childhood got stripped way sooner than it was supposed to and I thank God that I still have some part of it relatively intact for me.

The phrase ‘welcome to the real world’ is the scariest adage I know of. If you are someone who looks and feels like an adult now, please tell me what you did? And if you relate to me in any aspect, please tell me what I missed!

This world really is a vile place, the more we understand the difference between the relative good and bad, the more difficult it becomes for us to see the world as a happy, hopeful place. Having said that, I do feel the happiest and most in control of my destiny in the present than ever before. I don’t feel the need to go back to my childhood and relive those days. All I wish is for someone to tell me ‘Are we supposed to know what we are doing?’

‘No!?’

‘Great!’

Then I shall fake it till I make it!

Ps. This piece is supposed to mask as an internal conversation finding its own resolve in the end, like every other well-meaning internal debate. But if you do know what we are supposed to do! Please tell me...

Sincerely,

A four-year-old stuck in an adult’s body

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