I’ve admitted ‘adulting’ – and it exposed me as an imposter

Let me paint a scene: I’m at a music festival in a sea of ​​bodies. The Rubens play and giant screens broadcast every anxious expression. We sip home-made, handcrafted pale ales and watch all the beautiful people – glittering cheeks, Blundstones, Akubras, short skirts and square sunglasses – looking like an advertisement for the beer we drink. The night is young; everything is possible. Someone mentions a joint.

And then I remember I’m an adult with a mortgage and two little kids, and this must be some kind of virtual simulation. I do not belong here; I should be at home by the fire, darning socks, rustling a batch of marmalade or feeding a lamb. This festival is a wormhole in a past life where hangovers were mild and there were no small limbs to wake me up in the morning. I feel like a cheater.

The term “impostor syndrome” has been used in psychology since a 1978 study. It is defined as a “persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud”. It usually affects high achievers who doubt their abilities, but in my case I have doubts about my maturity. Who left me alone with these little dependent people and financial responsibilities?

“Adulting” — the obnoxious, overused word that launched a million hashtags — was coined by Kelly Williams Brown in 2013. Twitter still cites them: “Just did my tax! #adulting,” “I have a leather sofa purchased that isn’t from Kmart #adulting”, or my personal favorite, “A haiku about my life: I’m so tired/Where’s all my money gone/My back hurts #adulting”.

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One night during early parenthood I was out with another mom friend at the pub. Our bubs were curled up asleep in Baby Bjorns on our chests. We sat with a rowdy gang of twenty-somethings with whom we struck up a conversation. After a few drinks, I changed into the mind of thirtysomethings and warned them to enjoy their youth before it was too late. “Seriously, it just sneaks up on you. You are so young and free; don’t waste your chances,’ I said before my friend gently dismissed me.

My twenties were the best. They were so good that they continued, well into their thirties. At 35 I could still be in it. Maybe it’s this need for constant stimulation – new things, new shows, new places. I’m restless, bouncing around for the next Big Fun thing. I should have already settled down and learned how to make sourdough, but instead I feel like a kid who wags his tail in class, evades household obligations to go out for a bottle of wine, and turn on the Pilates reformer machine. to use the gym.

As it turns out, Kelly Williams Brown regrets making up grow up. “I am so sorry. It haunts me,” she wrote in it Vanity Fair last year. She became the poster child for coming of age, only to feel like she had failed all the advice she gave in her book.

I need to look like an adult to my kids, but I’m sure my parents looked, or at least acted, older (although who knows what happened at those dinner parties?)