Another quiet morning listening to the clock on the wall ticking away comfortably. I’ve poured my coffee and put my butt into the depression on the couch that everyone fights over, which makes me smile. 

It’s just a depression, but it’s the place I fed all my babies in the quiet nights while the clock kept us company.

I look around and see the usual things a home is filled with and wonder how the heck I became an adult. Like, seriously.

One day I was minding my business trying to make it through school, the neverending story, and the next I was married and setting up shop thousands of miles away. 

Sometimes I wonder about motivation. How is it that we get anything done at all? Looking back at all the school years, how is it that I kept going for twelve more? What was my motivation? 

Initially it was just to get away, but it changed quickly into something that I understood, “got”, and loved, and it was so hard to say goodbye to it.

The first time I truly finished school was at the end of residency.  June 30th came around and they said I was done. Here’s your papers, go away. Many of my friends had panicked long before that moment, and added specialties and subspecilaities to extend their sentence. I joked at the time it was like being in prison, and we were all institutionalized. But sadly it wasn’t a joke for some, and when they finished some would enter periods of depression, of existential crisis.

I was excited though- excited to be an adult and make my own decisions, make money for the first time in thirty years that was more than minimum wage (every resident does the math in what they are making and I think we figured with call and overtime we made about 1.25$/hr then)

And it was exciting, in some ways. Moving, meeting new people, and yes, getting paid. I could finally start paying back the hole that was my royal bank loan, which some nights I dreamed wanted to eat me.

But being an adult was also more uncertain. I didn’t always have people to ask for help, my decisions were the last step. I agonized, and still do, about whether or not I’ve done the right thing. Am I really helping someone or not? Would someone else do a better job? The nights I’ve cried, feeling like a failure, even while understanding some things are out of my control. It’s like being a student in many ways, but without a reset button. No do overs, no summer school, no repeating a grade.

Sink or swim.

And I was so,so lonely for so long, doing everything on my own while surrounded by friends and acquaintances. When I met my husband I thought there, now things will be good. 

And they have been, but now I have the opposite problem- now I’m never alone. Now I crave these moments of alone time, of hearing the silence and the clock tick. It has become important in a way I never thought it would.

And once again I read the news. About the opioid crisis all over North America. I wonder if these people are just having a hard time adulting. Just need to take a break and go to where things feel easier, more comfortable. Life can be so hard at times, even if it’s going well. Mental health is a fragile thing, and any one of us could hit our limit at any time.  Anyone could start coping in a way that will lead to ruin without knowing they’ve taken the first step down that road.

What keeps some people going through everything? The ones that cause  you to look at their life and just shake your head, thinking how no one could possibly handle all of it. And yet, they do. They adult the crap out of it and never complain. 

And I’m sitting over here, cranky if my kid wakes up ten minutes early (even when I secretly want him to sometimes so I can cuddle him while he watching paw patrol) because that’s ten minutes of my coping time.

So yeah, adulting is frickin hard. I look up to those who seem to weather everything like big old trees in the forest while I’m more like a shrub in a sheltered neighbourhood.