Alright let’s not waste any of your time because you need to back to doing absolutely nothing constructive: being an adult sucks. If you don’t agree with this statement it means you’re either a child or a houseplant. In fact, the only things that suck more than being an adult are houseplants and children (in that order.) Lucky for you, I cover all the reasons why in this masterpiece of Internet literature, so read on, you sagging sack of joint pain.
The Beginning: A Failed Launch
Reaching adulthood isn’t some kind of triumphant evolution. You’re not a Pokemon. And there’s no “coming of age” bullcrap either, mate, Hollywood lied to you. It’s more like discovering that your inner caterpillar got screwed halfway through its metamorphosis and became a disappointing botfly instead of a majestic monarch butterfly. You don’t ascend into maturity, you just sort of arrive here, confused, malnourished and blinking into the fluorescent lights of responsibility like a half-stunned mole dragged out of a glovebox.
You thought adulthood would mean independence, wisdom, maybe a fridge with actual food in it and the knowledge of how washing machines work? Cute, but no. What it means is Googling “is this smell normal?” at 2am and pretending you didn’t just eat takeout for dinner again. You’re not an adult, you’re a malfunctioning Roomba with debt and too much hair in the wrong places.
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The Daily Grind: You, Losing, Repeatedly
Every day you flop out of bed like a wet bean bag dropped from a third-floor window. You stand up, knees creaking like a haunted pub sign, and attempt to dress yourself in whatever clothes are lying around you and haven’t developed sentience yet. Then you march into the world, armed with your signature stale breath, a half-charged phone and the boundless confidence of someone who has absolutely no idea what they’re doing.
You arrive at work, aka a never-ending carousel of pointless tasks, performed with all the enthusiasm of a sloth on a Tuesday, except it’s Monday and it sucks. Your inbox is a digital landfill of messages no one should have sent and every email you write chips a little bit of your soul off. You say things like “per my last e-mail” even though what you really mean is “can’t you read, you buffoon?” But you don’t say that, do you, tweedleturd? Of course you don’t, because adulthood has crushed your spirit AND your spine.
By 3pm you’re so tired, even your shadow looks exhausted. You fantasize about quitting everything and becoming a lighthouse keeper, but even that job would require some form of dynamism and I’m sorry, my little numbnut, but you simply don’t have any.
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Money: Or Why Your Wallet Hates You
Oh look, it’s payday! You thought earning money would solve your problems? Bless your heart, you cabbage. It’s adorable, really. When you get paid, you feel rich for exactly four hours. Long enough to buy a coffee, panic at the price and check your bank account again just to confirm that you are, indeed, financially anemic.
Bills multiply like rabbits on performance-enhancing drugs: electricity, water, rent, taxes, insurances, subscriptions you don’t remember signing up for and are somehow too lazy to cancel. Why do you pay for a streaming service when you always watch the same five shows? Because you’re weak, you foot fungus. Weak.
And let’s not forget the sudden expenses: the car that breaks, the teeth that crumble (we told you to floss!), the appliance that dies in the night like an unwanted Victorian child. Every purchase feels like a personal attack. Even your groceries. The cashier looks at your items… Noodles, discount cheese and a sadness-adjacent bottle of something alcoholic? You can feel their pity seeping into your pores.
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Self-Care: A Bold yet Failed Experiment
You keep telling yourself “Now is the time, I’ll finally get my life together!” but we both know you couldn’t get your life together with duct tape, divine intervention and a team of qualified professionals. Your diet is a joke, your skin is flaking like a croissant left to cook under the sun and your sleep schedule resembles a toddler’s drawing of a roller coaster. You wake up tired, stay tired, go to bed tired. You’re so tired that being tired has become your personality and people don’t even bother pointing it out anymore.
As for exercise, your gym membership is a tithe you pay to guilt yourself. The only cardio you do is running away from your responsibilities and the only lifting you do is your phone when one of your illiterate friends texts you “u free tmrw?” You are, but you will lie because guess what… That’s right: you’re tired.
Your body is in a constant state of low-grade rebellion. Sit wrong? Back tweak. Stand up too quickly? Knee pain. Breathe deeply? Pinched nerve. Existing? Fatigue.
Read also: Guide: You Are Burning Out
Relationships: Two Idiots Hoping for the Best
Romantic relationships in adulthood are a hilarious, tragic circus: two malfunctioning meat robots trying to co-manage insecurity, trauma, chores and who didn’t put a new roll of toilet paper. Dating apps have convinced you that everyone’s passion is traveling. They’ve also convinced you that the general population consists of guys way too proud of their fishing skills and lying about their height, and girls whose entire personality is being flexitarian and having hiked up the Machu Picchu. So you cling to each other because you’re scared to be forever alone.
Half your communication is coded messages like “are you okay?” meaning “hey, you acted weird when I said that thing and now I’m overthinking my entire life.” And the other half is arguing about who left the dishes “soaking”, even though everybody knows that “soaking” is a lie, you lazy noseclot, and about why everyone else’s couple photos look like ad campaigns while yours look like a psychological thriller’s poster.
Your emotional baggage is a carry-on you reluctantly wheel everywhere, their baggage is a cargo ship that is now somehow your responsibility, and together you maintain a delicate dance of tolerance and mutual delusion. Beautiful.
Inexplicably, though, it sort of works. Poorly. Barely. But it works, kinda like you, by accident and unexpected momentum.
Read also: Guide: Navigate Romantic Relationships
Social Life: A Waking Nightmare
Remember when hanging out meant sending a text like “pub 9pm?” and magically five people would appear? Now planning a meet-up requires three doodle polls, a calendar summit and an international treaty. Half your friends have children, one moved to another country, one has vanished into the abyss of “busy,” and the rest are too tired to move.
When you finally do meet, the conversation is 10% medical updates, 20% complaining about work, and 70% desperately clinging to the illusion that you’re still fun and interesting. You’re not. No one stays out past 10:30 anymore because adulthood has turned you all into sad bowls of pumpkin soup.
Even deciding where to eat becomes a geopolitical dispute: “I can’t do spicy,” “I’m vegan on Wednesdays,” “I refuse to pay this much for French fries,” “I don’t like places with chairs.” Eventually you resign yourselves to the same place you always go to and sit there sipping overpriced drinks like the washed-out, balding, depressing relics you’ve become.
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Existence: A Cosmic Joke
Sometimes you find yourself staring at a wall, thinking thoughts so bleak even your furniture looks away in shame. You wonder how everyone else is coping when you can barely remember what day it is. Here’s the twist, you rancid fart: they’re not coping either. Society is just a massive improv’ show where everyone is bluffing harder than you. You just suck more at it than the others!
Your hobbies aren’t fulfilling. Your job isn’t meaningful. Your dreams have been put “on hold”, meaning “rotting quietly in the attic of your mind while you try to remember if you need to buy carrots.” You tell yourself life has purpose, but the only constant is that the trash goes out on Tuesdays.
Meanwhile, the universe observes you with mild curiosity, like “ah yes, the clumsy flesh creature is confused again. Typical.” And you keep going. Because that’s all adulthood really is: trudging forward despite everything, powered by caffeine, despair and the faint hope that one day something might finally make sense. It won’t, but bless you for trying, you wet sponge.
Read also: Interview: God is Disappointed (and Kind of Over It)
Final Verdict
Adulthood isn’t just disappointing, it’s the world’s longest-running bait-and-switch, a grandiose promise wrapped in bills, fatigue and the slow realization that no one is coming to save you from the mold growing in your fridge. It’s all grit and no glamour: a parade of minor humiliations, petty chores, leaking appliances and conversations about interest rates you pretend to understand. And you, bless your pathetic little soul, you basically stumble between loud colleagues, flaky friends and passive-aggressive relatives like a confused extra who wandered onto the wrong set and stayed out of politeness.
But somehow, despite the confusion, the exhaustion and the sheer absurdity of it all, you keep going forward, mostly because giving up sounds even more exhausting.
Final rating: 2/10, because hey, at least you’re not a child anymore, even though at times it’s not exactly obvious.
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