Adult Not Grown

I finally get it.  Shout out to my parents, Charles and Rhonda but I finally get it.  All the times I was yelling out how “grown” I was and my parents would come behind my rant, and burst my bubble, I would feel some type of way, I was wrong and they were totally right.  But the reality is they were teaching me an invaluable lesson.  A lesson I need to share with some of my adults who have yet to walk in what it is to be a grown man or woman.

As an adult its easy to think you have arrived when reality you have not.  You think that age has finally granted you the right to speak up and do whatever it is you want until life hits you and find out real quick the difference between grown and an adult. After many conversations with other adults let me help some of you fake grown adults out a bit.

An adult by definition according to the law is anyone who is 18 years and up.  How many 18 year olders are supporting themselves?  Not many.  However when they get in their feelings and want to talk they throw grown around and quite frankly not living up to it.  There are 50 year olds that are doing the same.  Your age doesn’t make you grown, its how you live your life that makes you grown. Just like when I was in college with a car but had a scholarship I was feeling myself except that my parents were still insuring my car.  See if I really wanted to be grown I should have been fitting ALL of my bills.  Yes I had two jobs and taking 19 credits and doing well, but the reality is I would have been financially supporting myself without their help then I could have hollered I was grown. My parents would have respected it.  Trust and believe they awaited the day for me to be grown.  All I had to do was use the energy of wanting to say I was grown and really be grown to get there.

Grown is when you can finance and deal with the repercussions of ALL of your actions. So if you fake grown and are pregnant with a baby that others will have to help you to support you just made an adult decision but ain’t grown enough to handle it.  See now I can say I am grown.  No one can say that they had to support me.  When I had my kids, my parents didn’t shell out money for my children.  They could just be grandparents and not feel like they were second parents in command.  As much as anyone could have had so much to say at the end of the day, no one had to support me financially.  I made a grown and an adult decision and still do this day.

See adulting will have you thinking the best of yourself when you aren’t in that place.  Grown people do grown things.  They can handle rejection, they can handle fall out from their decisions, they can stand on their own.  You can’t call yourself grown when at the very sign of pain or hurt, you fall apart.  You are just an adult that can’t take things. Grown folks are just grown and handle life has it comes.  Now that isn’t to say that things won’t knock you down, but there are childish adults that whine and die if any one thing happens.  Please understand where you are.

Here are examples of you being an adult but not grown:

1. Someone having to pay your rent for you.  Grown people provide for their housing.  So if you are in the category of having to borrow money ALL the time you are an adult you are not grown. Grown people make an assessment of where they are financially and get their finances in order.  If that means cutting back, not spending on things they don’t need, etc.
2. If you always have to call someone else to fight your battles. Why can’t you hold an argument or disagreement? If you find that you always need someone to speak for you, or you only say what you need to say when your support system is there, you are not grown you are an adult.  Grown people do as Kevin Hart, they “say it with their chest” and move on.
3. If you have credit issues but refuse to deal with it, be grown open them past due bills and handle it.  You may take forever and a day to get it together but you do it because you are grown and have to face the music.
4. If you have offended someone, apologize.  Yes this is hard to do but as an adult and one who wants to be grown be humble in my Kendrick Lamar voice.
5. You lack accountability. Yes you are an adult.  Yes you can do certain things, but accountability leaves from parent to child so you can become stable.  The fact that you think of yourself as an island just because “nobody can tell you what to do” shows your lack of maturity.  Handle your business but have the maturity to know when to let others into your space and when to let them go.
6. Skipping responsibilities such as fathering a child you had, being a good mother, skipping work, not paying bills, etc this is an adult who isn’t grown.  We ALL have been an adult that may have been messy in one or more of these areas, but when you are grown you are constantly trying to improve.  Not going to work is not being an adult, that’s stupid.  Yes stupid.  If you don’t work you don’t eat.  Stop relying on others to bail you out until you get your check next week because you don’t want to work and do what you need to do.

So to all of my adults that haven’t started walking in grown up things, get there.  It’s going to take discipline.  No one should have to carry another adult’s load.  Things happen in life, that someone will have to help others but when this is your everyday life than you need to accept that although you are by age an adult,  you are not a full-grown woman or man.  Get there!  Thanks to my mom and dad for busting my chops many a day.  Especially when I wanted to make decisions that they would have had to deal with the fall out.  I teach this lesson to my own kids.  We can be friends when you can pay these bills is not just a thing that parents say but its a way of life.  You can’t keep talking the talk but not walking the walk.  You really have to be able to handle YOUR decisions.  If YOUR decisions become a community response and it’s not just because you got sick, or unable to work, maybe you need less “grown” talk and more “grown” actions.