Things I Hate About Being a “Grown Up”*

Everytime pay day rolls around I seem a million status from other “adults” on various social media along the lines of “money goes in, money comes out” because when you have your own home to maintain we all make sure our direct debits come out after pay day. But lets face it, it’s SO TRAGIC! One minute you’re rolling in cash, your bank account is happy, you’re happy.. you can finally have that shopping spree you’ve been dreaming of for the last three weeks.. then BAM it’s gone again in the blink of an eye. Making ends meet and keeping your sanity is HARD these days. My mum says it’s like a million times harder than when she was young. Although I don’t have the job that requires me getting dressed and working 50 odd hours a week (yes, I have done it, I worked my butt off from 16 and right through uni) but I do still have to do work to ensure my daughter has the best. I have to work once she’s in bed after 7pm. Or if I get a spare moment during the day inbetween keeping a house and looking after a toddler. I still work hard for anything I get and when it all goes on bills and food and into savings, that I have left is depressing. I miss the days where I could go to Topshop and blow hundreds of pounds on the latest fashions. But guess what? That isn’t on the cards these days, and to be honest.. as miserable as it makes me at times, I just have to give myself a good kick as a reminder I’d take having my own place over a fashionable wardrobe any day!

Remember the time you lived at home and you only had to say “make your bed” or “lay the table” those were the good ol’ days, right? Being a single mother of a child who can only just get herself dressed means that all the chores fall on my shoulders. And I’ll let you all into a little secret.. I HATE housework.. Okay, not all of it.. I like cooking and doing laundry.. I don’t mind hoovers, decorating or even making the beds.. but I HATE dusting and mopping the floor. But for me, the worst has to be washing up. I don’t know if it’s all those years working in he catering industry but washing up is like a special form of torture. I dream every day of owning a dishwasher. As when I lived with Bee, I had no problem with stacking and unstacking the dishwasher.. it’s just the process of washing up in the sink I hate. That and changing the sheets on my bed.. I honestly feel like i’ve done a few hours in the gym after struggling to put the duvet cover on!

I guess this goes hand in hand with the fact that I can no longer spend a fortune on clothes (9/10ths of my wardrobe is Primark/eBay/Depop as I cannot warrant spending much on myself). On occasions I miss not having to consider everything else in my life before making a decision. I do sometimes miss being reckless and selfish.. because if we’re all honest with ourselves, sometimes those crazy schemes end up being a whole lot of fun. If I had my way I’d run around the country to every convention cosplaying all the Disney Princesses like I did for LFCC back in July. But I can’t because that’s money I don’t need to spend. Yes I sometimes miss going out dancing with the girls and spending all day in bed watching Disney movies with a hang over. I miss having take out for dinner when I’m too lazy to cook and I REALLY miss just getting on a train when I’ve had a bad day and running off to my best friends for a week. Sometimes it sucks so much that I always have to do the sensible thing, that I have so much responsibility as a single mother.. but once again, I have to think of how much I’d hate the alternative, and then it stops me hating the responsibility so much.. well 99.9% of the time anyway.

My biggest gripe with being an adult is the fact time seems to go so much faster. I remember being a kid and the 6 weeks summer holiday felt like a lifetime, now it goes in the blink of an eye. Days when you’re busy always seemed so long, now the days I have a million and one things on my to do list are the days that end up being over before I’m ready. Holidays, birthday, Christmas, new year, they all come around so much faster.. or so it feels anyway. When you’re a kid you don’t worry about the passing of time, but as a mother, you really do. If Little Miss ends up being my only child, it means I’ll never get that chance to have a new baby again, that the excitement of first steps, first words, they’re all over and gone. She’ll be 3 in January, I’ll have a 3 year old child. It’s terrifying. I don’t want her to grow up. We have such a close bond that I can’t imagine her not being with my nearly all day every day. Yes, sometimes I wish time away when I’m looking forward to something.. but every Sunday night I realise how fast the week has come and gone. It makes me sad, sad that in less than 4 years I’ll be 30.. sad that my parents are almost 60.. When you’re a kid you don’t realise how precious time is, and how much you should enjoy your childhood. Although I wouldn’t want to do it again, there are certainly things I wish I’d done differently. Back then my biggest worry was whether or not someone would call me a stupid name or put gum in my hair (hey, it happened!) I wish I had let all of that go, because now my worries and the things that bother me are so much bigger!

Yes, there are a lot of things I hate about being an adult, but there are a lot of things I love too. I love being a mother, I love deciding where I’m going to go on holiday, what I’m going to make for dinner and what I’m going to put in my trolly in the supermarket. I love my own home and knowing everything in it belongs to me. So far, being an adult has sucked so much worse than being a child.. but looking back on my younger years, I realise that I should have been enjoying the good and dealing with the bad as it came. Writing this post has made me see that, and hopefully one day, I’ll have that dishwasher so I won’t hate washing up so much, and I’ll have a fab job where my outgoings still leave me with enough that I don’t complain come payday! But in the mean time, I’ll focus on the good.

What do you hate about being a “grown up”?