I turned 18 in December, which means that since then I’ve been able to:
- Use a meat slicer working at the deli in a grocery store
- Go skydiving (pending courage, and maybe a coupon)
- Compete on “Wheel of Fortune” (pending sudden extroversion)
- Legally chaperone someone at San Jose Furcon (pending … my mental breakdown)
None of that’s actually happened yet, but I’m holding out hope for the skydiving.
All jokes aside, though, there’s a strange in-between-ness with being 18. I’m technically an adult, but also not really, because I’m still in high school despite being able to (theoretically) buy a house. I sign my own dance competition waivers and go grocery shopping with a list and a budget — but talking to people over the phone is still scary, so if I had to schedule my own dentist appointments I’d probably freak out. We tend to equate adulthood with these tasks that demonstrate responsibility and self-sufficiency, but maybe that’s the problem: tying adulthood to a checklist of tasks.
Personally, responsibility didn’t wait for adulthood. It came to me through lessons on what it’s like to feel unsafe at home and what hotlines to remember. Habits such as planning a go bag and running through a mental list of friends I could ask to crash with aren’t part of the conventional checklist for adulthood, but they taught me more than any birthday could. I learned to be someone everybody — my family members, my friends, even myself — could rely on.
That early sense of responsibility bled into virtually every part of my life — school, dance, the newsmagazine you’re reading right now. Honestly, I’m proud of becoming someone who gets things done. It helps that I’ve always liked the challenge of figuring out how things work. And at the end of junior year, my peers in El Estoque voted for me as “Most Inspiring,” which felt surreal given that under the surface, I’d been desperately trying to hold everything together.
Still, it’s not like any of that made me any more “adult” than my peers. I’m 18, but it turns out, being an adult isn’t a finish line — it’s just another starting point. I still need to learn how to politely exit a conversation without ghosting the other person; how to have strong political opinions, yet also portray the amiability needed to keep family dinners peaceful; how to be independent, but not so independent that I lose sight of the people around me.
With college just around the corner, I’ve become increasingly grateful for all the ways I rely on my parents and the people who support me. I’ve also resolved myself not to be like my older brother, who’s recently called from the bank to ask “Mom, do you know my ATM pin?” or asked from the kitchen, “Mom, how do I swallow a pill?” Still, I’ve mentally prepared myself for my parents texting me “Did you eat?” weekly like I’m a Tamagotchi, since some things never change, not even with a diploma. And I’ve been learning to open up about the parts of me I usually keep tucked away, because at home I spent years being the strong one, the responsible one, only to realize that I never got the chance to be fragile.
So, here’s to being a legal adult! I remember my mom crying next to me for 30 minutes straight after I opened an acceptance letter. At one point she asked me, still crying, “Why aren’t you happy? I’m so happy!” Trust me, Mom, Dad — I am. I made it to graduation, and I made it to college. I’m ready to be vulnerable and embrace new opportunities to learn, because I’ve realized that the most adult thing I can do is admit when I don’t have the answer — and to trust that we’ll figure it out together.
