Ah, Teenage-Me! She Thought I'd Grow Up.

I am now roughly the age my mom was when I was a teenager. I also have a teenage son myself who is now roughly the age I was when I had him.

Looking at him makes me realize how terrifyingly young I was.

I remember wondering about what it was like to be grown-up when I was around fourteen or fifteen. I was close enough to “being of age” to see "adulthood" glimmering on the horizon. Sure, I still had a few years of school ahead of me, but I always assumed I would move out right after school and that was getting closer and closer.

When I was that age, it felt like my mom always knew what to do. There was always food, there was a house, electricity and water bills got paid. I vividly remember wondering how one would find an apartment and do all of these things. I concluded that this knowledge would magically appear in my mind as I grew older.

I am now the age my mom was when she appeared to me like she knew everything.

I now know that she knew nothing for certain. Because none of us do. We all just keep making things up as we go along, at least that's how it feels to me.

I never really feel completely "competent" at any of the life things. Even the fifth time I have to contact our landlord because there is a leak in the roof feels like the first time. Thankfully, I have google. So I just type in "water damage reduce rent" and find an answer to all my questions.

My mother didn't have google.

Being a grown-up feels strange. Nothing feels as certain as I expected it to feel when I was a kid.

Turns out, growing up is not a magical thing that happens one day.

Instead, everything is always about figuring things out.

The crazy thing is that everything also works.

When I was fifteen, I had no idea how to find an apartment, how bills got paid, or how "one just knew things and made life work".

Now, I just do all the things I wondered about back then.

Maybe fifteen years old me was not so wrong after all. We learn just in time, When we need to know, we learn and then we do.

My younger self just didn't realise that "knowing" is not a feeling and that it doesn't 100% exist. And yet, my 95% guess now looks like "absolute knowing" to my teenage son. One day, he'll be my age and pay his bills and do his life and realise that all the things he didn't know when he was sixteen, still turned up in time.