HELLO, I'M A 33-YEAR-OLD WOMAN-CHILD

It occurs to me on various occasions that I'm an adult. When my parents were my age, they already had been married for five years, owned a home, and made the decision to stop having fun and start having kids.  Most of my friends have "real jobs" and "disposable income" and have "paid a lot on their student loans."  I sit on the floor of a studio apartment eating popsicles and watching XFiles reruns.  I am not a successful adult.

Really the only people that consider me an adult are members of the government (dude, 18? 21? No WAY those people are adults), children, criminal defendants, theme parks (I do NOT need to pay that much more for a ticket, thank you) and baseball parks that refuse to give me the "kid's" promotion because I'm "over 15."

I enjoy studying for the bar exam because it's like school and not work.  I have had real work, for like two and a half years, and it was weird.

I considered myself an actress playing a part. Every morning I would wake up and put on my lawyer costume (a suit and heels), drive to the courthouse, pretend I was a mature professional, interact with other adults awkwardly and eventually get to go back home and put on yoga pants and an ancient sorority tshirt while watching Family Guy.

When I was a prosecutor, I never let the real me come out. The real me is not "appropriate for a courtroom" or really any place that doesn't serve alcohol.  I blame the fact that I haven't gotten a "real job" (after trying to not be a lawyer) because people can see I'm putting on an act in the interview. I really want to talk about cat videos and say "fuck" a lot, but I have to pretend that I'm "able to control myself" and "won't embarrass the company." Instead of the real me, they get nervous, formulaic me so I won't scare the everloving shit out of them and thus am relegated to the pile of other nervous, boring people.

When I'm unemployed, other than trying actively to remedy that situation, I have no idea what to do with myself. I'm seriously like a child, but I live 1500 miles away from my parents, all alone, and have managed to keep both myself and my cats alive (and two plants!).

Seriously, how do I do it?

I have called my parents to ask how to bake a potato. MORE THAN ONCE, BECAUSE I FORGOT.  It's not like a cake, potatoes don't come with a little sticker that tells me how long to bake it, it's not MY fault.

I've left my debit card in ATMs not once, but TWICE. One of those times was yesterday, and I had to wait until today for them to get it out of the safe for me.  Because of that, I did not have ONE DOLLAR to see a required show at Second City.  I WALKED AROUND MY COMPLEX FOR 15 MINUTES LOOKING FOR PEOPLE'S DROPPED COINS.  I AM NOT SHITTING YOU. When that failed, I took a nap, because I'm an adult.

I do my laundry about once a month because I wait until I have no pants left. Then for the next week, I draw my outfits from the pile of clean laundry on the floor of my apartment because I HATE putting it away because I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH DRAWERS.

Sometimes I open my fridge and all I have is an egg, some water, maybe some hummus and various condiments. The grocery store is likely still open, but because I hate interacting with people and going to places where I have to  push around a large cart down small aisles and generally get anxious, I go to In N Out.  I'm actually angry that there aren't more types of food that have drive thru windows.  CHIPOTLE I'M LOOKING AT YOU.

I may or may not use Hello Kitty stickers to mark the times I use the gym on my calendar.  I may or may not have a LOT of unused Hello Kitty stickers.

If it was feasible and not painfully expensive and unhealthy, I would either microwave or eat out for every meal.

No matter how long I have to do it, I can never wake up before 10am without snoozing my alarm 4 times.  Except for the bar exam, but a) I had adrenaline working for me and b) I didn't have to wear real pants.

I made my bed today for the first time in months, only to get under the covers and take a nap ten minutes later.

I bought a coloring book (IT SAYS IT'S FOR ADULTS, OKAY?) and markers at Barnes and Noble and now I color while I watch crime shows on Netflix.

I only want a job so I can make enough money to take vacations from said job.

I have to text my friends to ask them what kind of accessories I should wear with a certain outfit because I was not given that part of a female's brain.  I know something is important or formal if I'm not allowed to wear flip flops.  I only learned how to dry my hair and brush it at the same time four years ago.  I own and wear a shirt that features a cat eating noodles with chopsticks. CATS DON'T EVEN HAVE FINGERS.

Yet somehow, some way I'm not 1) dead, 2) in jail, 3) on probation, 4) living in my parents' basement, 5) 19. 

I feel like I should finish this by asking how to "be an adult" but honestly, I can fake it when I need to and being a grown up looks SUPER lame.  And by that I mean being a workaholic who has no time to enjoy herself and too many responsibilities (children) so that life just becomes the same thing, day in and day out.  But I also don't want to be a 23-year-old and expected to use terms like "on fleek" or "bae" and not be taken seriously as a person by anyone.  I guess it's nice to have an on/off switch - I just prefer my adult switch to be off.