When do you know you’re an adult? Is it when you move out of your parents’ house? When you start being responsible for paying your own bills? The first time you buy a beer? Have sex? Admit you were wrong? Or is it as comedienne Elaine Boosler once said “You know you’re an adult when something falls in the toilet and you have to get it out.” ?
I don’t think it’s any of these. I think you finally become an adult when you do something unpleasant, something that you’ve said you will do, that involves balancing your responsibilities against the feelings of another person with the realization that sometimes responsibilities have to win out.
After nearly 7 years of home-ownership, more than 12 years of paying my own bills, and 14 years of being able to buy my own beer, I’m finally about to become an adult.