Being an adult and other anomalies

Moving into your first apartment or leased house calls for pictures, occasional hugs and your mom’s unwarranted weeping. It is an event that marks some step into adulthood and a landmark in your responsibility.

Last weekend, I moved into a little blue house on Grant Street. I stood and watched my mom drive away from my Bloomington address.

I had a feeling I’m sure you can imagine in the pit of my stomach, not unlike the one you had on your first day of school. You feel more adult and independent than you ever asked to feel.

For a lot of people, myself and roommates included, having a house means washing the dishes. It means going together to find matching, discounted furniture. It means sewing drapes, eating balanced meals and using a toolbox.

Though we all have moments in which we feel we’re growing up, moving out and moving on, sometimes you can’t help but feel like you’re kidding yourself. I have never put a bed frame together. I have never made pillows. The spark to being an adult seems to be a lie.

At a certain point, you find the balance between playing house and having a home.
Spending too much time trying to be older than I actually was left me antsy and compulsively looking at IKEA catalogues.

I had no time to enjoy my house because I was too busy trying to make it like all the houses I had seen in sitcoms from the ’70s.

And at a certain point, you need to stop trying to be an adult and start being a kid who lives in a house.

Doing so means you say you’ll go vegan and then eat a tub of Greek yogurt the next day. It means using a screwdriver for non-screwdriver purposes.

It means using a liquid measurer for dry ingredients. It means breaking the sewing machine right off the bat and nailing table linens over your windows. It means having an oriental futon next to a bald eagle lamp shade.

When all of your attempts to be an adult feel childish, it is time to do what you know. Being an adult has its advantages, but the time we have as kids is limited.  I can’t imagine a better time to enjoy the fruits of youth than in a new home with other people your age.

There lies a happy medium where you’re close enough to adulthood to have the dull, yet fulfilling sense of accomplishment.

Of course, your horse-themed bathroom and peanut-butter-and-jelly-on-a-tortilla meal remind you that the freedom of our earlier years is a beautiful, precious thing.

­—  ftirado@indiana.edu