But to recognize these moments, to say to myself, Hey, this is shitty, and I should stop being such a shitty person right now, is already a more adult move than I was ever prepared to make in the past. I look back on eighteen-year-old Chelsea—whose life was pretty much a series of shenanigans and hijinks in which I inserted my foot ever more violently into my mouth and dated guys who enjoyed treating me like something recently scraped off the bottom of their shoe—and feel secure in the knowledge that I am treating everyone better now, including myself. No matter how criminally underrated it may be, this respectful and thoughtful treatment of yourself is perhaps the first real step to making constructive emotional choices. You’re never going to wake up magically one day and think, I’m gonna stop hanging out with people who make me feel like a leper and maybe start building constructive friendships with people who are kind to me unless you believe that you’re the kind of person who deserves it.
At the risk of sounding like a wall hanging your grandmother needlepointed for you, feeling that you deserve it is probably the biggest component of all this. Because there is only so much success you’re going to achieve in any area of your life if you don’t think you’re a good person who is worthy or capable of any of the things you’re doing. (Except maybe in the professional arena, since I’ve met several people who work in finance whom I could only describe as dead behind the eyes, but they make a fuck-ton of money, so good for them.) For most of us normals, however, feeling sincerely as though we are cool, interesting, good people we would want to hang out with if given the choice is a pretty essential component of growing up, it would seem.
We’ve all met people who ooze confidence, and not in that dicky way that gives the distinct impression that they like the smell of their own farts more than anyone should. These people just seem genuinely happy with themselves, even if they wear clothes that other people consider goofy-looking or aren’t super-attractive or don’t make a ton of money. They are generally cool to be around because their confidence and self-assuredness is a kind of port in a never-ending storm of “Is what I’m doing okay??? Do you like this???” that we’re bombarded with from the vast majority of our friends and social media. It has a tendency to rub off on people when you’re just incredibly happy with yourself and don’t really need anyone’s approval. (Ironically enough, it tends to be the people who aren’t terribly caught up in what others think of them who end up getting the most respect and admiration.)
The truth is, that no matter how much you feel as if you and only you are a giant fuckup and everyone else around you is laughing and dancing as romantic success and hundred-dollar bills rain down on them, everyone is confused. I don’t know a single person in my life—no matter how successful in any given aspect of her life—who feels as though she’s got everything on lock and is now putting life on autopilot and coasting through until she reaches a perfectly contented death somewhere in old age. And even the people who have somehow mastered several important things in life all at once and find themselves with relatively few logistical problems are then presented with the existential meltdown that is “Am I becoming boring?” In a way, the thrill of being unsure about things is so much of what we love; it’s hard not to get at least a little contact high out of feeling like everything ahead of you is open and unknown.
Speaking personally, I was never a confident person growing up. It usually happens that way when you’re awkward-looking with braces and cystic acne and a weird sense of humor and glasses in a shape so unflattering that selling them to unsuspecting young tweens should be a crime—you’re not terribly well-liked. You don’t get to feel enormously good about yourself. It’s hard, especially for people who grow up feeling that they’re unpopular or that they don’t have a distinct place in life, to ease into an adulthood where they genuinely feel that they’re carving out the life they want to be living.
For me, and I’m sure for many others, choosing to see the good parts of yourself and think more about what you’re doing well and what is within your control to change rather than languishing over how tragically uncool or unsuccessful you are is not an easy thing to do. It’s so much more natural to pick on yourself, to see all the things you are not measuring up in, to watch your friends doing things with their lives you are terribly envious of or scared by and wonder why your life is not moving in a similar direction.
But at a certain point, constantly picking on yourself and thinking about how you are not good enough is just exhausting. I could spend all day browsing through Facebook and counting the times I see someone I miss who doesn’t care about me, or someone whose life I wish I had. I could do what I have almost always done, which is think about what part of me isn’t pretty or smart or growing up quickly enough. I could think about where everyone is, as if we’re all running some kind of hundred-yard dash and place myself directly in front of or behind people, depending on how much money we make or whom we’re dating. And I’ve done that; I think we all have. We’re not getting grades anymore. We’re not all living together. We’re not hanging out in the same social circles—we have to have some rubric to measure ourselves against.
I have tried, though, in the past year or so, to remind myself of the things I do well in life, of what I can be proud of, even if someone else doesn’t think it’s impressive enough. I make lists of the things I don’t like in my life, things that I can change, and I work on them. I try to pay bills as efficiently as I can, and work hard, and be comfortable in what I’ve achieved at the end of each day. And I try, most of all, to be a little easier on myself. I will never be as pretty or as rich or as well-liked as someone else, and there is nothing wrong with that. As much as these messages of self-love have become cloying platitudes, there really is nothing truer. Being kind and patient with yourself is a choice you can make every day, and when you make it, you realize that every other aspect of your life—from getting that promotion to meeting the kind of people you want to surround yourself with—becomes, as if by magic, just that much easier.
Maybe that is what makes you an adult more than anything else in your life. To look at what you’re doing and honestly say, “I am trying my hardest and being kind to people, and I like who I am” is something that so many people—regardless of where society might place them on any number of scales—cannot say about themselves. You can list a million reasons not to feel like a grown-up yet, to feel like you have so far to go and so much to prove to everyone before you can kick back and feel like the master of any kind of domain. But to make the choice every day to take responsibility for what you can change, to decide that you are not going to bullshit your way through with whiny diatribes about how it’s everyone else’s fault and never your own (which I must cop to having done for an extended period of time), or how you are never going to be as good as this or that person so why even try, seems like a pretty good place to start.
You could always be doing something better, and there will always be someone you’re slightly envious of. And until you reach whatever imagined plateau of “My life is awesome and perfect and impervious to criticism,” you’re just going to have to deal with that. (Spoiler alert: You’re probably going to die before you ever reach that plateau.) If you can do one favor for yourself, and put one checkmark in the “mature” column for yourself, let it be realizing that just because one friend has a better job, or another one is getting married, or your ex has moved on before you, you are not a worthless child who doesn’t deserve the lofty title of “young adult.” You’re just figuring it out with the rest of us, and this isn’t some county fair contest called Who Can Construct a Nuclear Family in under Five Years Out of College. It’s called Life, and you are going to be playing it for the next several decades at least, so you might want to pace yourself on the “I am an unequivocal failure who doesn’t deserve to take up space in this coffee shop” front. I promise you’re doing much better than you think.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank my family for always supporting m
e in my imperfect journey. (Especially Mama Bear, who protects her cubs with the razor-sharp claws of love.) Anthony, I am Rocky and you are cutting my eyes in the corner of the ring so I can keep fighting. Jordana, I am a better writer because of you (and your infinite patience). To Chris, thank you for giving me my first home as a writer—the best team I could hope for—and for believing in my work. Finally, I owe you everything, Marc. I could not have written this book without you, and I will always be trying to be as good a human as you are. Thank you, everyone.
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