Adulthood: When Everything is Easier, Right?

Do you remember being a teenager? Your life constantly in flux while your mind is overloaded with more emotions than you can process, riddled with insecurities and a deep unshakable loneliness. Making friends is a confusing if not impossible process full of popularity contests and friendship killing landmines awaiting each misstep. You are torn between a host of conflicting expectations telling you who to be as you try to nail down just what your identity actually is.

And through it all someone tells you "This isn't forever. Someday you will grow up and get past this."

I am the real Chris here

I'm a grown-up now. A fell-fledged adult. I have a wife, a job, and even an apartment with renter's insurance. I have a college degree. I pay bills and I punch a time clock. So how come I still feel kind of like a teenager? I thought this was supposed to get better, right? Why do I still have all this insecurity and loneliness?

I think the hardest part for me about being away from Tribe is just the overall loneliness of it. I'm completely lacking in peers. The irony is that though I am alone I know I am not alone in my loneliness. I know I'm not the only one having trouble making friends or the only one wishing for more people to spend time with. One of my friends said pretty much everything I'm feeling a year ago, I'm just not as good at putting it into words.

What really frustrates me is that I really thought that things were going to get easier at some point. I thought I would begin to feel secure and self-assured. I thought I would reach a point where even if I didn't have friends I would be okay with that. I thought once I became an adult I would be stronger than this.

But I'm not.

I'm sad and I'm lonely and I'm very insecure. I don't feel like an adult at all. Or more specifically, I don't feel like what I thought adulthood would feel like.

Well, if I have to

But what can I do to make it better? To be honest I really don't know. I've given this a lot of thought and read some articles but I think I'm just at the point where I have to suck it up and just hold out for better times.

I'd like to think that I'm actually in a second "teen" stage. When I was a teenager I was too old to make friends easily or feel confident and good about myself, but I was too young to go out and find find peers easily or know how to present myself. I was in an awkward middle stage. Now I think I'm in that place again. I'm too old to just be a college kid and goof off and fit in with a bunch of 18 year olds, but I'm too young to have "adult" friends or know how to cultivate "adult" friendships.

For the time being I'm just stuck.

I'd love to drop some epic wisdom at the end of this post, but I really don't have any to give. This is where I'm at right now and I guess I just miss Tribe. In lieu of wisdom I ask you to accept this gif about the things I'd like to do with my adult friends now that I'm all grown up.

We made a spaceship once