On Becoming

It is 4:09 a.m.

There is something about writing at this hour, in the Notes app, on a weekday night, from my childhood bed, that feels embarrassingly nostalgic.

The room is mostly the same. The same wardrobe with the slightly stubborn drawer. The ceiling is the same one I used to stare at while calculating how little sleep I could get away with before school the next morning.

Tonight feels strangely similar.

The difference, I suppose, is that back then I was trying to figure out who I wanted to be. Now I am trying to figure out who I am becoming.

There is a peculiar stretch of life that exists between college ending and life beginning. It feels less like standing at a doorway and more like being trapped in a hallway that keeps extending every time you think you’ve reached the end. (backrooms reference intended)

For years, adulthood was presented to me as a destination. Something you arrived at. You turn eighteen. You get a degree. You get a job. Congratulations. You are now an adult.

The funny thing is that I turned eighteen half a decade ago. Legally, I have been an adult for years. Yet somehow this feels like the first real transition into adulthood.

The path ahead looks less like a road and more like fogged-up glass. You know there is something on the other side. You just cannot see it yet.

Lately I find myself carrying around a mental catalogue of all the people I could become. Not in a dramatic way. Just in the quiet moments. On walks. In the shower. While waiting for the water to boil.

I think that is what nobody tells you about transitions. They are not exciting and cinematic in the way movies suggest. They are mostly disorienting. You wake up every morning feeling slightly out of place in your own life, as though somebody rearranged the furniture while you were asleep.

Metamorphosis, it turns out, is deeply inconvenient. Everyone talks about becoming. Nobody talks about the administrative nightmare of becoming.

A few days ago I told my best friend i don’t know what to do being up at 9 am. “Do something productive,” he replied. “Take a shower.”

And I remember staring at that message thinking, when did showering become productive? At what point did we collectively decide that basic maintenance qualifies as an achievement? Maybe that is where we are as a generation. Existing in such a state of perpetual optimisation that drinking water, going for a walk, or washing your hair now feels like checking items off a to-do list. Productivity has somehow expanded to occupy every corner of being alive. Even rest now arrives with a performance review attached.

And yet, perhaps he was right. Not about the productivity part. About doing something. Anything. There is comfort in small acts when the larger picture feels impossible to comprehend. A shower. A walk. Writing nonsense in your Notes app at 4:09 a.m. Tiny reminders that life is still happening even when you cannot see where it is headed.

It is 4:37 a.m. now.

The room is still the same.

Am I?