22 Struggles You Have When You're Young At Heart And Dating A Real Adult
I'm a girl with many types. I like creatives. I like business women. I like creative business women. I like long hair and I like short hair, but for the record I don't like people who have both long and short hair (mullets just aren't my jive). I also like blondes and brunettes equally.
But you know what I don't like? Children.
And by children, I don't mean actual children, you sick perv. I mean adults who ACT like children, which is almost all people in their 20s (which is why I would rather die than date someone in their 20s; it's a vile decade).
I just CAN'T handle the concept of dating a girl who shares a studio apartment with six fucking roommates, or God forbid lives with her PARENTS.
Call me a bitch. Call me a snob. I don't care. I don't want to go home with a 20-something hot mess whose apartment smells like socks and is going to cry later because she just doesn't know her greater "purpose in the world."
I don't want to be with a fuckgirl whose idea of a romantic night out is some grimy Lower East Side bar, and I can't deal with you if you're still angry with your mother because she forgot to pick you up from school that one time in the third grade.
I just can't deal with any of that. It gives me an untreatable headache, and dating should never give you an untreatable headache.
Maybe it's because I'm still a child in many ways. I might be prancing around the Upper East Side with a quilted Chanel bag I paid for entirely by myself, and I might be fully employed in my dream career, and I might not be at all angry with my parents for making me late to school all those times, and I might even have an apartment with my own bedroom that even has real windows (a big win in Manhattan).
But I'm still pretty young at heart, and I probably always will be.
My emotional age is about 17. I'll always do stupid 17-year-old things, like leave the flatiron on and burn the house down, or tear a big, gaping hole in my tights before an audition, or have an accidental turn up on a Wednesday night. I've accepted that this 17-year-old existence is MY reality.
And I don't know if that's why I've always gone for real adults (balance is everything, right?) over other wild-haired, mascara-streaked crazies, but it really doesn't matter anyway. Give me a grown up or give me death, babe. I don't care how hot you are or how much money you have in the bank; if you don't have a fully realized sense of self and if you don't wake up before 9 am, I'm just not into it.
However, it's not all fun and games when you're just a free wheelin' girl going about town dating real live adults. There are some sobering struggles, hun. Here are 22.
1. You feel heaps of shame when you're reminded to take your contacts out before you go to sleep because you realize that you actually have to be REMINDED to take your contacts out before you go to sleep at 30 years old. That's just a really sad and pathetic metaphor for your life thus far.
2. You have to pretend to be surprised when she says you left your passport at her house for three consecutive days because really, you didn't even realize it was MISSING.
3. You're constantly hoping you don't run into your crazy, wild-eyed, wasted-as-hell friends when the two of you attempt to go on a civilized Sunday brunch.
4. You live in fear that the bouncer will tell her how you got hammered and danced on the table last week when the two of you go out for ONE drink at a downtown bar after dinner.
5. You hope your credit card won't decline when you treat her to a lush dinner.
6. You pray your credit card won't decline when you treat her to a lush dinner.
7. When your credit card doesn't decline, you have to hold back from jumping for joy and screaming "THANK YOU, GOD!" with tears of joy in your mascara-laden eyes.
8. When your credit card does decline, you have to act oh-so-shocked and oh-so-offended, pretend to furiously check your bank account and be bewildered as to why such a thing happened.
9. You become hyper-aware of how much you actually party.
10. You have to be reminded not to wear a totally sheer dress to her posh company holiday party.
11. You start to become hyper-aware of how slutty you actually dress on a regular basis.
12. You become hyper-aware of how often you sleep in your makeup, and become deeply embarrassed when you notice you've left streaks of mascara on her pristine white pillows.
13. She gets irritated when you turn her pristine white towels ORANGE with your cheap body bronzer. In fact, she buys you your "own" towel so you don't tarnish hers and trust me, it's not white.
14. She's shocked at how quickly you bounce back after a morbid hangover.
15. You try to hide your text messages not because you're doing anything scandalous, but because you don't want her to see the angry response from your dad after you asked him for a $500 loan for the rent.
16. You fear you will say something really lewd and embarrassing in front of their grown up friends if you do drink, so you don't drink around them, which says A LOT.
17. You find yourself asking her for a lot of, well, um, life advice.
18. You're madly embarrassed when she finds a piece of your hair extension twisted up in the bed sheets. You're even more embarrassed when you find out she already knew you had hair extensions. You thought you'd been fooling her for months.
19. You start to notice how many winter jackets you lose.
20. You become very aware of how many meltdowns you have.
21. You're super paranoid that when you introduce her to your friends, they will spill all of your dirty, horrible, scandalous secrets and your cover will be totally blown.
22. You take a long, hard look in the mirror and notice that your skin is a little clearer and your eyes are a little whiter because her habit of taking her makeup off and contacts out at night has rubbed off on you. You think you might like this new sort of grown up life, which deeply terrifies you because your entire identity is wrapped around being YOUNG. "What now?" you wonder as you gaze at your perplexed facial expression.
