Personal Narrative: Becoming An Adult

Becoming an adult means becoming many things. Adults have to make their own money, get a career, and do other activities that all seem pretty daunting to the average adolescent preparing to enter that stage of life. However, through maintaining a level head, active listening, and a pen and some paper, I realized many things about what it means to be a grown up and just how wrong I was all along.

A couple of months ago, my sister came home in tears, going on about how my mother was going to yell at her. Allegedly my mother, who was supposed to pick her up from her after school theatre practice, got fed up on waiting for her and left. My mother had texted my father to go pick my sister up instead. It was very uncharacteristic of my mother to just abandon one of her children without reason, so I was confused. My mother had gone straight to bed upon coming home, therefore, she was unable to contribute to the mini-meltdown my sibling was having (for better or for worse). I comforted my sister, and coaxed her into explaining the situation. Through maintaining a level head, I gathered enough information to assess the situation.

My mother had been doing uncharacteristic things like this the past few months; small outbursts, storming off, etc. Eventually, the small things build up over time, and the moment my sister came home sobbing was the
Everyone is just trying their best to put all of the pieces together at the end of the day. My mother, seemingly this emotional and structural powerhouse for my family, is just as flawed as I am. This experience humanized the people in my life (my mother, my father, some of my teachers) that I had come to idolize. Through listening, reaching out, and keeping an open mind, I had an epiphany about what it means to truly be a grown up- that is, oftentimes most adults are just big kids, trying to make their way through the world the best they can just like everyone