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NATALIA

Adulting is a scam

Take me back to the early 2000s.

Please, universe, I beg of thee. Free me from this torture that is existing within this timeline. It sucks here.

I, wholeheartedly, with every fiber of my being, do not recommend this present hellscape I’m forced to call reality. Adulting and all the crap that comes with it is a scam.

To think I spent my youth dreaming of what it would be like to have “real adult money” to purchase a house with and travel to as many places and as often as I desired without a care in the world is laughable. I don’t have any of those things. I’m overworked, underpaid, and the only travel I can afford is wherever my overactive mind drifts off to.

I swear, if I could go back in time and tell teenage me anything, I wouldn’t say a thing. What I would do, however, is slap the shit out of myself for rushing what I now recognize to be the peak years of my life.

It makes me sick to think I had it all: burnt CDs, instant messenger, cryptic but always emo MySpace statuses, my hot pink Razr phone, butterfly hair clips that made any hair style instantly chic, inflatable furniture that lasted all of two sittings—if you were lucky— stores dedicated to renting physical media…the list goes on.

Now it’s all reduced to memories, and I rushed it.

For what?

A mountain of student loan debt I’ll have cleared just in time for the nursing home?

A job I thought would be a dream but is a corporate nightmare?

A driver’s license that says I’m in my thirties, but a pair of knees that creak and crack any time I make even the slightest movement?

Give me a break.

Life is a joke, and unfortunately for me, I’m the punch line. Maybe if I accept defeat and embrace it, I’ll be happy, or at minimum less disappointed.

I snooze my phone alarm one more time. Not that I have an elaborate morning routine to get ready for work, but I should’ve been out of bed almost forty minutes ago, which means after this snooze cycle I’ll have approximately fifteen minutes to throw clothes on, brush my teeth, and get coffee made if I’m lucky.

With every intention of using my prolonged time in bed the way I always do, I nestle myself deeper into the sea of blankets draped over me, ready to doomscroll. My thumb only gets as far as hovering over the passcode options on the illuminated phone screen before the date catches my attention.

It’s Friday…October thirteenth.

Welp. There goes that. Mission Doomscroll Socials to Avoid Responsibility has been aborted. Hello, influx of bittersweet memories playing out in my head like a silent movie.

This used to be one of my favorite days of the year. Now it’s just a shitty reminder that I have to celebrate my birthday alone and not with my best friend and birthday twin, Rennix.

Already feeling depressed and about to be in a rush, what a solid start to the day.

I breeze through my morning routine, needing my nectar from the gods, otherwise known as my coffee, more than ever. I head to the kitchen to prepare a cup to go. I know caffeine is intended to make one feel awake, but I wonder today if the jolt to my system will also make me feel less dead inside. It’s a big ask, I know, but adding a generous splash of Kahlúa in like I want to probably wouldn’t be the wisest decision.

Regardless, let the record show, I am sad enough to consider it but broke enough to know that the job I need to keep, despite my boss underutilizing my skills as a game designer, is the only reason I’m deciding to not make a foolish decision so early in the morning.

Being responsible is such a bore sometimes. Sigh.

Thermos of non-spiked coffee in hand, I make my way to the door. I get as far as grabbing my keys off the small hook secured to the wall, when said coffee I forgot to put a lid on goes flying out of the cup as it drops to the ground, burning my hand in the process when a knock sounds at the door.

It’s too early for this shit. It’s bad enough that someone is at my door in the first place. I hate unannounced visitors…or visitors in general if it’s not one of my handful of comfort people in my life. Although, saying a handful feels generous. The desire to socialize kind of went out the window when I made the conscious decision to start giving zero fucks in life. Now, thanks to whoever is knocking at my door, I have the jitters and not the good, I-just-downed-coffee kind. Oh, and I smell like I bathed in hazelnut coffee. What bliss.

A voice sounds from the other side of the door. I recognize the nasally tone immediately.

Fuck.

Shit.