When I was 6, I thought 11 year-olds were the coolest people in the world. When I reached 11, I felt lacking, I wasn’t as cool as I imagined those kids were, so adventurous and together. Suddenly, it looked as though the 15 year-olds, swanning about town with their friends, establishing their independence and social circles and having a blast were the real together ones.

When I got to 15, I had neither my independence nor a social life. Lacking again.

I am now 34 years old. Even I know that’s a proper grown up’s age, I am not feeling it though. Not in the youthful “living my best life” kinda way. I have gone through so many therapeutic processes this year and they have bettered me and freed me to be myself. I genuinely feel like this is a brand new chapter in my life. I haven’t felt this level of freedom since I was 19 years old (which incidentally, is when my independence and social circle were finally established.)

Then, I had fun, I laughed, I felt free. I had everything that life has to offer to come.

When I was 20, I fell in love with Kev. But with that came a familiar anxiety. Was I good enough? Me? Would he leave me? Looking back on it now, with the benefit of the 14 years of our relationship as hindsight, I realise that these fears took me out of the equation. My true self had been scared out of the experience. We got married and I was so proud to have somewhere new and forever to belong. But I still did not know how to be my authentic self. We weren’t acquainted.

Any parent knows there is nothing more terrifying than having those precious babies placed in your arms and realising that this is for you to do. You have to raise this beautiful, innocent little baby in this crazy world and you have to Get. It. Right. I poured my soul into that with both my girls because I had never wanted anything more than to be a mum, to love someone so completely. I didn’t know then that that was what I needed too, for me.

The pressure to get it right (which I accept now was entirely self-inflicted) but it came from a place of absolute good intention) was crushing. I felt like I was never going to be enough, or good enough to be the mum that these two beautiful girls deserved.

I have never felt like a grown up. But it is only as I have been in therapy and going through my own therapetic processes (I have done a lot of work to establish a protective and trusting relationship with my inner child, for example) that I have realised I have never really questioned what being a grown up means. I’m a married mum with two children and a mortgage. What’s more grown up than that?

But nope, never felt it. And the more time I spend with other grown up people, that is, friends who are close to me in age, people that I assume know what they are doing in life, the more I realise that absolutely everyone is scrabbling in some way. Money can be tight, relationships hit hard times, houses get packed up and dreams can too. It’s sad but comforting, because it’s happening to us all, right?

We live in an age of social media highlight reels. They are not reality. I moved away from social media in February and I feel so much calmer. The pressure to present My. Best. Life is lost. I keep in touch wih those that care enough to engage. Thankfully, these people identify themselves easily and it’s been effortless to let the other 100 people on the social media sideline go. Life is smaller and calmer and I know where to invest my effort.

But therein lies my point. It’s in the small and invested life that you get to see the reality of the lives of the people you care about. No-one (should) use social media to announce their lows. We hide them. That is not the same as having your life together. It’s a concerted effort to pretend because we feel we have to, for the benefit of others, so as not to have to answer questions they may not even be entitled to know the answers to.

I was travelling on a bus yesterday and zipping past all these neat houses. I was envying the beautiful troughs of tended blooming flowers in front of bay windows. I can’t keep plants alive. I chose kids. I wondered how much less I need to have to do on a daily basis that I would be the kind of person who could spend intentional time keeping flowers alive to the point of being beautiful.

My big sister finds immense peace in nature. I envy her that, because she can at least dedicate herself to cultivating her own slice of nature in her garden. I deliberately chose a paved yard because I couldn’t keep a plant alive and it’s horrifically sad to watch things die.

Then, it occurred to me, are all these beautiful blooms grown by people like my sister, for their own peace? Or are they tended by people who care more about how things look from the outside? Beautiful flowers, freshly painted exteriors are beautiful, but it does not mean that the lives lived on the other side of those freshly painted bay windows are without pain, shortcomings of feelings of not being enough. It does not mean that these people are not trying to “keep up appearances”, to keep the highlight reel churning.

Therefore, there is no such thing as being a “grown up”. We’re all just trying to work our way round the curveballs of reality. No-one has it together, even if they’re desperate to make it look that way.

Finally, I am free, no longer chasing an age to be where I will “know” or will miraculously “have it together”. No more “when I grow up”. I am there. I am me. I am enough.