Confessions of a toddler

I turned 23 last week. Today, I had to play About Time three times in a row, just to get through some of my chores. Yes, that is a two-hour film, and no, my apartment still isn't clean. I deleted Instagram recently, not out of concern that I doomscroll too much—which I do—but because my digital algorithm has turned into a tsunami of footage about shelter dogs that need rescuing. I was forcing myself to read every single caption and watch every single video that popped up out of compulsory sadness and guilt.

I adopted Charlie last October, on the first day of the month, eleven days after my mom moved out. Today, I picked him up from a dog sitter who thanked me "for giving a rescue dog another chance." Honestly, it was Charlie who rescued me. Not to echo the cliché of every single film about dogs and humans, but it's true. Adulthood, which only really begins after college, is scary, lonely, and hard. I experienced so much separation anxiety after my mom left. I had never once cried out of homesickness during my 3.5 years of boarding school (Covid) or six weeks of summer camp, and certainly not during my four years of college. But this milestone goodbye that inaugurated my adulthood really was a hard punch. I wrestled with my abundance of feelings alone for eleven days before gladly accepting Charlie's help. He brought his own intense flavor of separation anxiety into our home, but that worked out nicely for me because it meant that we were (are) inseparable.

My boyfriend launched this blog for me around the time of Charlie's adoption, because I mentioned that I was no longer writing much now that I was out of school. I missed it. I missed having someone—a professor, a literary society—forcing me to write. I also missed having an audience. The one talent I've been praised for consistently since I was thirteen is my writing ability. Yet, it's been a longstanding insecurity of mine that I find writing to be very effortful. I think truly gifted writers must bang out exceptional sentences—at least, sentences that are exceptional enough—with relatively little time and labor. That's never been my experience. I enjoy the practice of writing, and sometimes I enjoy my results, but because I find the process to be so tough and time-hungry, I struggle to pick up my pen when there's no external motivation. Maybe another thing that sets me apart from the truly gifted writers who are destined for this path in life.

Enough! It would be a terrible shame if my first post devolved into a bout of self-doubt or self-pity, which have been two recurring villains in this early stage of adulthood. I like writing and I miss it; hence, this blog was born. There you go. My friends may read this, my boyfriend certainly will, and perhaps one or two strangers whose wayward algorithms bring them here. Welcome to my bubbling cauldron of semi-polished verbal churn and somewhat private thoughts.

Oh, I should explain the title of this post. It may be the seedling for a future name for this blog. It occurred to me, a month or so ago, that a significant source of my anxiety regarding adulthood is the knowledge that my childhood is over. Childhood is forgiving, generous with time, and plentiful in front-of-mind problems that can actually be solved—regardless of whether I felt this way at the time. Adulthood, so far, has shown opposite tendencies. Adulthood, in my most nervous moments, seems to be implacable, rife with problems I can't solve, and the dwelling place of implicit but intimidating countdowns. (I would go on, but I'm sure that these little anxieties will ebb and flow through my future posts and make themselves known.)

Here's the punchline. To combat this way of thinking, I've concluded that I am presently in the toddler years of my adulthood, instead of being at the end of my childhood. The uncertainties, worries, and problems I am experiencing are all very ordinary parts of toddling. The only thing I need to do is to keep taking my wobbly steps. Someday, hopefully, they'll become a steady gait.