Did anyone have a moment where they realized how much being an adult was going to suck?

[NoPoint2Life]

For me, it was at my first job. Going my whole school life always having a week if not more off from school during the holidays it was like a reality check to have to work the day after Christmas. It was actually slightly worse for me also because I had to go in extra early the entire week because my coworker would take that week off. So I just couldn't believe I was commuting at that time on that particular day.
Then at my job after that where I was for 16 years, it really felt like a shock to the system not to have Christmas Eve off.
I suddenly remembered all the times as a kid that I would laugh to my father about how I was off from school and he had to go to work. Growing up sucks.

 

[LimpandNumb]

Adulting is hard and yh everything you said its like shit, reality check.
People say find a job you love and you will never work again- or something like that.
That never applied to me.

 

[LAPD]

For me it is/was the post-University job search. None of the jobs available are jobs I would find enjoyment from on a day to day basis. And yet my applications are still rejected for those jobs. All of my options are terrible and I deluded myself until graduation thinking otherwise. It gave me a brutal reality check that I don't know if I will ever recover from.

 

[foreverfalling]

I don't remember but it must have been either after high school or University. I long saw it coming, but all of a sudden I had no aim in life, like I was thrown into an ocean and I don't know how to swim, or into the jungle with predators everywhere. There was a sense of safety during school, having schoolwork to do, peers that had at least something in common with. I did feel more and more behind as I progressed through later years of school. At that point I tried roping but chickened out, and here I am now still. I learnt that the easy way out wasn't so easy.

 

[TheHolySword]

yeah when i was 12 or 13. i already wanted to die then and i knew it never got any better.

 

[ConfusedClouds]

Not necessarily when I fully realised adulting would suck, but definitely a moment that impacted my decisions was after uni chatting to a school mate about travelling/backpacking. She had not gone to uni so was established in work and although she was still living at home, she had a car on finance. Her boss recognised she had missed opportunities that uni students have like extended backpacking or long summer jobs like Camp America and offered her unpaid leave/sort of sabbatical. She was keen to go but couldn't take the unpaid time off due to her car bills. Since then I've generally saved and paid up front for everything and (not sure whether this is related) felt very conscious if tied up in job contracts I wouldn't be able to get out of if needed/wanted. Lots of high hours/pay seasonal jobs and the like to top up savings.

The shit show of general adulting life is probably only now sinking in where I am facing 'real' world of work and a second attempt at a 'permanent' career/contract. And being fully relocated and isolated from my past lives so fully reliant on paying my own bills with no shortcuts (e.g. not registered to parents address), so watching the pay going straight out again.

 

[HarryCobean]

When I hated school and people told me I had to go because it would prepare me for being an adult. I knew right away that any adult life that was remotely like school was going to be shit.

 

[KuriGohan&Kamehameha]

For me it was graduating university and going from having a rich social life to being completely alone overnight. I never had friends growing up, so being social was important to me, and I went from having a taste of that happiness to having nothing at all. People you've spent years with becoming total strangers you never hear from except maybe once every couple of months. I kept getting told the loneliness would get better when I finally found any sort of work again.

Then, it was getting my current job. I spend all my shifts being yelled at by the public and in horrible physical pain, sometimes I can't even go to the bathroom for hours at a time. The stress and feelings of alienation from being around people you can't relate to is insane. The worst feeling ever is knowing that you can be suffering so badly, but aren't allowed to leave work because you know you can lose your job if you are ill too many times, and the other staff would talk badly about you too, probably.

Every night I feel like someone has stabbed me all over with a hot metal poker 500 times over. It makes me feel like a prisoner to be stuck in such an environment multiple days a week that is causing me pain, and having no freedom. Realising I am going to spend the rest of my life doing jobs I hate and being in physical pain all the time makes me wonder what the point of such a fruitless endeavour is. Is this really all there is in "the real world" as they call it? Such bleakness?

And trust me, I spent months looking for a job and this is the only one I could get. I feel totally not cut out for adult life.

 

[Pluto]

 

[Halfhourdays]

I think adulting sucks, and nobody really knows what they're doing.