Adult-ing 101

Every day is a new day; tomorrow is a new day. New day means new you. So you have to go grab every opportunity that comes your way no matter what. Give your best and be confident. You ought to believe that you are the best. You are going to walk into that room and own everything. Everything!!!

Now, that’s what I think every day before I go to sleep. But then reality is quite the opposite. I wake up in the morning which is of course, late. Now, I am not a morning person which I believe no one really is. At least I have not met people who are all this bright and shining like a bird.

There are a zillion times in a day where I am silently crying and questioning God like Joey does. ‘Why God? Why me? I thought we had a deal.’ Just that I never had a deal like the one Joey had. I was the kind of child, who wanted to grow as fast I possibly could so that I could take control over my life and be entirely responsible for whatever I did.  I still like the fact that growing up has given me total control over my life for most of the parts but for some situations when I do have to take permission from my parents. But coming back to the point, yes, adult-ing is great until you are thinking of it in your head but in reality, there is only sometimes when you are proud of being an adult.

I am broke, I am lonely, I am hungry and I want to sleep. These are some of the phrases you will hear an adult say. It might look overrated. But trust me it is not. To get out of your quilt is one challenge and to get out of your bed is a whole new challenge.  While you were just taking small tiny steps because they said, ‘ Take one step at a time’ the next moment you know you have to pay your bills and rents and the electrician guy and the plumber guy and the maid and the cook and then you realize that all your hard-earned money is gone and then you spend the rest of the month which is almost half the month managing your expenses, waiting for that one bus to arrive to take you home because obviously the cab is going to cost you more and you don’t want to ask your dad for money. Yes it is frustrating; it gets on my nerves every day to think of money constantly.

But you know what, every month when I get the message saying my salary has been credited, I do somersaults in my head, the numbers aren’t really that great, but there sure is something about the last day of every month for those who work. It is like validation to my existence. It is like a pat on my back. For just that moment you feel good, you forget about the bills and the rents and you just live that moment. Only if every day of adult-ing felt that way.  It is difficult, it sure is. But if I think of it, on the days when I wake up early, run my errands; catch the bus on time I somehow am proud of myself at the end of the day.

I believe the problem is all our lives we are told to study well and perform well at exams, get good scores while our parents have done the rest of the work. Our mothers some of them excelled at taking care of the house without us even knowing what a great deal of effort it takes to run a house and some of the mothers excelled in taking care of both the house and their jobs. And our fathers never really told us about work experiences, they probably told us about their good days but never about their bad days. So, in the meantime what happened was that we learnt to be good at our work, good at our jobs but never really understood how much it takes to live all by oneself and to deal with bad days at work.

We grew up in such a comfortable environment thinking ‘oh we can all live by ourselves’. But it isn’t so easy. Which is why every little thing done right makes us so happy.

Sometimes I think how people older to me do it so effortlessly without complaining a bit. But I was wrong, just because our parents don’t say it doesn’t mean they enjoy every bit of adult-ing. On one such day when I was complaining about how life was so difficult, I met a taxi- driver. That was one day when the first taxi that came by agreed to drop me home. That was one of the days that made me fall in love with the city that Mumbai is. People here are so busy and always running with the time that sometimes you just require to stop and think for a moment or two or at least just talk about how you are feeling with probably the first nice person you see. This really nice man who was my chauffeur for the day started to talk about random things. And then he told me about how he had been living in Mumbai for over 25 years now away from his family in order to support them.  Adult-ing is not this cool word that you can use whenever you are broke or you have a breakdown. It is a part of your life as much as it is mine and there is no denying that. The way we all had a childhood and teenage life, adulthood is just another part of our lives.

It is always difficult to pass through every age of life. I remember how I cribbed during school wishing I never got old after the baby stage. There was that and then there is now when I crib about being older. I fear to get older than this. But that is how life is. I would not say embrace it because that would be way too clichéd but I would say, take one step at a time. Remember when we were kids, we always feared the part when we had exams? Well, now every day is that day. So, welcome to the real world. It sucks. You are going to love it. ;)

                                         P.C: Yeshwanth Mareedu

It is okay to be insecure....

I was eating my lunch while watching TV.  I was as nervous as hell. I had to be. The selection results for my post-graduation programme were coming out and I had been waiting for them since the time I woke up, which unusually was pretty early that day.

Mid-way on finishing my lunch, I checked my phone. The results were out. I scrolled nervously. I wanted to scroll down my way quickly to see my name at the same time I also did not want to scroll quickly, because I did not know how I would feel after knowing that I did not make through it.

There it was. I finally saw my name on the list. Tears welled up. They weren’t tears of joy. These tears did not have a definition maybe. They were just there. I ran to my dad and told him I got selected. I tried as much as I could to not cry in front of him. But I just couldn’t control. He looked at me, laughed and asked; do you not want to go?  His brave child that I was, I said, of course, I want to go. He did not coax me to tell him why I was crying any further. Maybe he knew the reason. But I did not.

The course was for 10 months. Each day felt like a year to me. I have lived away from home earlier but this time it was very different. I just could not be myself around people. I was not an introvert, but I had become one. I had become insecure and afraid of people. The first three months went on to be like that. I was insecure that maybe the others were much better than I was. Insecure that maybe others knew a lot more than what I knew. I was insecure about being dominated. The first three months were really difficult. At a point, I felt that maybe I was going into depression. I could feel a lot of negative vibes in the place which I just could not take.

The second trimester seemed a little easier. This was probably when I had the best of my time here. We did a lot of practical work, something that I had always wanted to do. I became friends with people in the process. I got to understand that I was not as bad as I thought I was at work. It gave me some sort of joy and peace.

The issue with short term courses is that there is very little time to know people with the entire hectic schedule keeping one busy all throughout. An opportunity to know a person is possible only if you work with the person. Most of the friends I made were in this way. By the time you get to know everyone, times up and you have to leave the college to lead your respective lives.

The third trimester went by like the wind. Though most of the time we were busy with the submissions and deadlines. This was probably the bestest if there was any such word that existed. What we did during this trimester has made me into this confident person, who I would never want to lose.

Sometimes, when I just sit back and think about why I cried the day the results came out, I feel that maybe in the back of my mind, I knew that it would take me time to settle down which meant that maybe I would have to spend some time alone without friends. I think that maybe I was afraid of going about alone without friends and afraid of being judged.

When I think of why this place has excessive negative vibes, I feel maybe it isn’t the negative vibes after all. Everyone present there either was staying away from home for the first time or was sceptical about finding good friends.

I had become very defensive during the first 3 months, I wouldn’t talk to people. I would just sit in my room and loathe about not having good friends. I failed to think that maybe the others were also getting defensive just like me. Maybe others were also thinking of being approached by people instead of going out and making friends themselves.

These days, for hours together, I sit in the college library or in some corridor of the college contemplating on how life has changed and how it will change in the coming days. These are some of the last few days I have here where I am either reading something or planning something for the projects that don’t seem to get over.

Life for me will surely change in the next couple of months considering that I will no longer be going to college, which in turn means, life will be tougher and meaner.

It wouldn’t be like how it is now. I wouldn’t be waking up to see my college right before my eyes. I wouldn’t be waking up just minutes before my classes. I would not be carefree about how messy I look. I wouldn’t have wonderful mentors to guide me even after I do something wrong. Most importantly, I wouldn’t be getting second chances.

It is always difficult to settle down in a new place. Especially in a place which is diverse. It is important to be open to all sorts of communication. It is important to be a good company for yourself first before looking out for friends to keep you company. Because people come into your life just so they can leave you. This is harsh, but also the truth.

PC: Deepali Saxena