By Michelle Hurst
@michellewallishurst13

My seventeen-year-old daughter told me recently that she doesn’t want to be eighteen. She wants cake and presents of course but not responsibility. To her, the birthday feels less like a celebration and more like a looming deadline. She says it’s too much pressure; she isn’t ready for the weight of it.

I listen to her and try to find the right words of comfort, but secretly, I am struck by her fear. I was nothing like her. When I was seventeen, I was clawing at the door. I couldn’t wait to be grown—to be finished with bedtimes, finished with homework, and finally in possession of my own life. I had no idea that being grown was far less fun than I had imagined. Now, I can’t wait to crawl into bed every night, and it seems the work—of one kind or another—never ends.

In college, I was certain I had arrived. I could vote, though I rarely gave the candidates much thought. There were no parents to police me, so I had to find my own boundaries—usually by crossing them. I have always preferred learning lessons the hard way. Back then, adulthood was defined by hangovers, parking tickets, and the rhythmic clack of a word processor.

By my mid-twenties, I was busy checking boxes: the marriage, the dog, the job, the health insurance, and a five-year loan on a shiny new car. My friends and I were all in the same place. We hosted dinner parties and performed the role of “grown-up” while still acting like teenagers. At twenty-five, adulthood meant debt, “working your way up,” and a brand of loneliness I had never experienced before.

In my thirties, I didn’t have to work so hard to look the part, but I was far too exhausted to enjoy it. I rarely got carded for wine at Target anymore. I had a mortgage, small children, and a chronic deficit of sleep. I acquired a tattoo, a chronic illness, and a therapist. During one session, she asked if I felt like an adult, and I nearly laughed. Despite holding leadership roles in every area of my life, I was still looking around for the real adults in the room. I had gray hairs and crinkles around my eyes; I ran long distances just to secure a few quiet hours to myself. I had never looked more like an adult, yet I had never felt less like one.

My forties brought deeper crinkles, career changes, and far fewer fucks to give. A new title and a retirement plan provided a sense of responsibility—but it was the kind of false safety that exists just before adulthood completely wrecks you.

Recently, a friend remarked that nothing makes you feel like an adult quite like being in probate for your mother’s will. It reminded me of something Kelly Corrigan once shared in an interview—the idea that we don’t truly cross the threshold into adulthood until we lose our parents. I’m not there yet. My parents turn eighty this year, and I am fearful of what is coming.

I felt the shift when I watched YouTube tutorials to learn how to change my father’s catheter bag, and when I bought Starbucks gift cards for the nurses he yelled at. I felt it when I buried a friend and her ashes stuck to my hands. I felt it when I toured memory care facilities behind my mother’s back, and when I spent three days that felt like three months waiting for my own biopsy results. I felt it when I found myself googling the stages of dementia while also feeling like I needed a doctorate to complete the FAFSA.

If that’s adulthood, I understand why my daughter wants to pass. I need it to be more than impossible decisions, aches, and losses. I’ve learned that my big emotions come in pairs: love and grief, hope and fear, joy and pain. I find myself wondering what the matching half is to this heavy feeling I can’t yet name.

I felt a glimmer of it when I stood in line with my son as he voted for the first time. I felt it when I showed up for community service and felt alive, connected to something larger than myself. I felt it when I told my boss that a task was beyond my current capacity and she simply said, “Okay.” As if it had always been that easy to ask for what I need.

Being an adult is all of that. Much of it feels terrible—the weight of doubt and the wondering if any of it matters. But it is also being proud and brave. It is everything, all at once. It is being the person reluctantly in charge, and the person following directions even when you’re convinced your way is better.

Mostly, being an adult is showing up. It’s learning how to change the catheter, filling out the form, and practicing a grueling kind of patience. It is holding the hard things and choosing to move forward anyway.

Now that I am so often the “real adult” in the room, I am trying—slowly, stubbornly—to remember how to feel like a child again. I want to show my daughter that while the pressure is real, there is still room to play, to be open, and to trust that even in all this heaviness, there is a lighter half waiting to be found.

Dr. Michelle Hurst is a writer, science educator, and mother living in Texas. She spends her days navigating the complexities of chronic illness and hunting for her lost keys, fueled by coffee, books, hikes, and hope. Find more on Michelle here.

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