Am I There Yet?: The Loop-de-loop, Zigzagging Journey to Adulthood

by Mari Andrew

“If you stumble,” she said, “that’s a great sign. It means you found your edge. You tried something that didn’t work, and now you know.”

All too often, I was anxious to feel more settled, to have it figured out, to stop learning lessons and just reap the benefits of lessons learned. The most helpful way to get over this anxiety was to think about my life as a collection of seasons, rather than as individual steps. It’s tempting at this age to carry around a mental checklist of Things an Adult Should Have and a monthly report card with markings for each Life Category.

Just like seasons of the year, seasons of life don’t have a finish line. Wearing a sundress in the middle of winter isn’t going to make it go by any faster. Pretending the cold doesn’t exist isn’t nearly as effective as making the most of the silence a snowfall brings. Even the most die-hard winter-haters can probably find some beauty in a cold morning with hot coffee, and can appreciate that the inevitable return of summer makes those chilly mornings seem all the more cozy.

What I love most about living isn’t accomplishing things, but experiencing them.

She enjoyed herself” would be an extraordinarily fortunate accomplishment. From now on, my life lived will be my life’s work.

They say saudade is unique to Portuguese, impossible to define in English. Nostalgia gets pretty close, but saudade is more complicated. It’s the remnant of gratitude and bliss that something happened, but the simultaneous devastation that it has gone and will never happen again. It marries the feelings of happy wistfulness and poignant melancholy, anticipation, and hopelessness. It’s universally understood by a cross-ocean culture with a constant feeling of absence, a yearning for the return of something now gone.

This is the bonus of a good date: you find things you love about yourself when you’re impressing someone else. Falling in love with someone else is a little bit about falling for yourself.

Acceptance is not a relief; it’s the realization that you will always carry grief with you.

When developing a personal style, it’s helpful to remember that you already have one.

Spending money shouldn’t make you feel guilty; it should make you feel grateful. You get to select something that will make you happier and more expressive.

Show up with stories to tell. Your whole life prepares you for the big moments, so go in confidently knowing you have years of experience to your name.

You may not always have the same friends or same relationship you have now, but you’ll always be with you.

The great gift of heartbreak, rejection, loss—of any challenge—is that it’s the impetus to stop hoping you’ll be happy someday and start making yourself happy now.

Making yourself into an adult is this ongoing process of transforming your life experience into the person you’ve chosen to be.