I’ve felt like an adult since I was a child.

Just pretend you know what you’re doing. Eventually you’ll forget you’re pretending.

I often think of this SMBC comic. It left a deep mark for me and it came out over 13 years ago.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-06-24

We are all faking it, we don’t have a clue what we are doing. Some are aware of it, some are not.

I’m almost 30 and just starting to feel like a kid.

I’ve had to be an adult since I was 10 but getting sober and having my first kid really brought me back to life. We play with a hotwheels track that we call car thing, we wrestle everyday, we have jam sessions where we switch instruments so for half of it I’m playing a tiny piano. When I buy clothes I let him help me pick stuff out and most of it’s from thrift stores so my outfits have gotten very funky.

He also makes doing adult things more fun, we do everything together so he helps me with house work. There’s the shark vacuum, the carpet cleaner turns the floor into lava, laundry basketball, we cook dinner together. My favorite is making pizza dough with him, it takes longer to clean up than it does to make the pizza but it’s a blast.

For me it was after both of my parents had passed away. There’s something about losing the people who could still see and treat you as their child, no matter how old you had become, that changes things. I do still feel like I’m waiting to be a grow up sometimes. My great grandfather lived to 101, and still often felt that way. But once the “adults” who raised you are gone, you find yourself out in the open and may have to admit that you’re the adult now.

I don’t know how to be an adult, but I know how to be a person.

I just realized the other day that one sure fire mark of adulthood is buying a vacuum. Nobody makes you buy a vacuum and you’re not going to die without one. Nobody really wants to buy a vacuum. It’s just something you have to do at some point. It’s a willful decision to spend your hard earned money on something that’s essentially a chore. Because that’s what a responsible adult does.

No, I still feel like an adult. I just feel like I’m still 24 (I’m 50)

When I started saying “I can’t do that, I’m an important guy with shit to lose” I became an adult.

I know I’m mature. I know I’m put into positions of responsibility. I still feel like a teenager.

I started feeling like an adult at about age 30. But 20 years later I still don’t feel that different than I did in my 20s.

I have kids myself, but I don’t feel ashamed of letting them know that I don’t always have the answers or that sometimes I like to jump the trampoline for fun.

Adults who seem like they know everything and act responsible all the time actually seem “juvenile” in my opinion.

They don’t really get it, you know? Like they got to that level of life by following expectations and then stopped developing past that and just keep trotting along. Some people get stuck there while others “soften up” when they get grandchildren and less responsibility or whatever.

People mature in different paces, but the whole “being grown up” is definitely just an optional phase.

I worked for a guy in his 90s who felt this way.

Im not quite there yet, but literally everyone feels this. You know what you know and you don’t know what you don’t know. Being an adult is figuring out how to distinguish between the two. If you’re able to recognize that something isn’t in your breadth of knowledge and you’re able to consult with someone else who is more educated on the subject matter OR you’re able to self-educate before applying your ignorance, then that makes you an adult in my eyes. Or at least is a large part of the bigger picture.

Our parents were faking knowing what they were doing, just like we are.