Do you remember the precise moment when you realized you weren't a kid anymore?
“The worst part of growing up is that the dentist doesn’t offer to use bubble gum toothpaste instead of mint for your cleaning”
When I absentmindedly posted a Tweet about my dentist a few summers ago, I could never have foreseen it leading me on a journey through the meaning of childhood, adulthood, and the space in between. Growing up is weird, isn’t it? One moment we’re running around the yard barefoot with our friends, then the next we’re stressing out about scheduling doctor’s appointments and paying our taxes. Yet, it seems impossible to figure out when, exactly, we stopped being seen as children.
From what I can tell, this is a relatively universal experience that each of us experiences differently. In researching for this project, I asked a few people close to me the terrifying question of “when did you realize you’d grown up?” The responses varied. For some, it was when they had to get a job. For others, it was driving. A myriad of responses arose, but there was one commonality among all those I asked: the uncomfortable period of silence where they struggled to pinpoint this moment exactly. It was difficult.
This is where I came to the realization from which I built my project. Adulthood isn’t static. Adulthood is a spectrum, and our life experiences carry us along this unmapped path toward adulthood. Sometimes we take a pause in our journey. Sometimes we decide to back up a bit to strengthen our roots. The path is composed of millions of moments that build us up into the people we are and will continue to be as we grow.
My goal in this project was to document my journey; my million moments that made me the sort-of adult I am today. As I went through the experiment sequence, I found myself especially drawn to the micro-essay genre to explore this topic. Through the micro-essays, I could take each individual moment that has contributed to my current state of adulthood and explode it. I could explore the circumstances surrounding it, my thoughts, the environment, and the changes I made following it. I was able to showcase both the happy and the sad moments, the connected and disconnected events, and the excitement as well as the fear that comes with the realization that you’re getting older.
Am I an adult yet? Have I grown up enough? I still can’t say, but I truly believe that writing this piece has pulled me a bit further along the spectrum of adulthood.
