To ask what's an adult problem that nobody prepared you for?

[Midge1978]

For me it's keeping the bathroom clean. I don't think I ever saw my mother clean hers but it was always immaculate and rosey smelling. I can't seem to keep on top of the mould monster in mine!

When you're at school and you're sick, you have the day off and get made breakfast in bed and watch cartoons.

When you're at work and you're sick, you are at work and sick.

You can't take sick leave if you're a mum.

Exactly damson

I'm hurtling towards the close of my sixth decade and am fortunate enough to have no major life-limiting conditions. Even so, one of my main regrets is that there's not enough time left to do all the things I'd expected to do when I was younger. You know all the usual cliches...the one night stands you never had, the books you never read (or wrote) All fallen by the wayside because of commuting, communicating with family far far away and the constant choring.
Why didn't they teach us time management rather than equations?

Reading the intimate thoughts of women I don't know on a mini tv screen attached to a typewriter and never being able to see what they look like.

People are fickle and for the most part selfish bastards. A life crisis will show who your real friends are (and you'll be able to count them on one hand!)

Once you get passed 35 everything hurts for no apparent reason. All the time. Joints, muscles, toenails, eyeballs......

And my newly discovered one, your flaps get flappier (I am not fucking happy )

I read years ago a priest's answer to what had he learnt over the course of his career. He said that more people were unhappy than you would imagine, and that there were no adults. The last part of his answer really scared me, but now I understand it.

One of the main things for me is just how seldom people are prepared to really stand up for, or alongside, another person, if there's even the slightest chance they might be affected. The level of self-interest and turning a blind eye is so hard to accept.

How easy it is to drift away from friends. When you're in school with them every day, it's different. You never suddenly turn around and realise it's six months since you've talked to a friend and it'll be another month before both of you have a free evening to catch up.

This^^

Another one who never thought I'd end up a single mum to 2 sndc. The irony of spending 10 years of my working life in MH then finding one of my dc wanted to kill themselves aged 11. Spending the next 13 years trying to get them the help they were crying out for. Fighting schools and universities to get the reasonable adjustments that ALL my dc should have been entitled to. But the biggest thing, I never knew was that in spite of being a sahm for almost 20 years, that I would go to university, complete a BSc HONS and an MSc and have my dc and dp there to see me graduate. Being an adult is so different to how I thought it would be. The good times are better than I ever thought, BUT the bad times are harder than I ever imagined.

How horrible other people are. There are the horrible school kids and the teasing but it is nothing compared to the real low life of society. The governments agenda, the thief’s, the con artists etc.

I wish everyone could be from a children’s cartoon where they learn their lesson and become a good person in the end.

That strikes a chord with me nicenewdusters . I was musing earlier about my uncle,my mum's much younger brother, who visited her exactly once in her nursing home, cried all over her (I was there) then never returned as he 'found it too difficult seeing her like that'. The sister who had always been there for him.He lives 3 miles away to my 130 but never once put in an appearance,even when I gently suggested it was a help to me to know other people visited her.

Yet he has a prominent public role in his local area and is keen to be seen supporting 'good works' and working hard for the community.

After a ,frankly, hellish 2+ years my mum died. And who was it blubbing all over me at the funeral? You guessed.

So,yes,I really do know what you mean about people standing alongside,selflessly. Fortunately there were/are others who showed more humanity.

I wish everyone could be from a children’s cartoon where they learn their lesson and become a good person in the end.

/\ this

I'm so sorry you lost your mum Campion. I'm reaching a quiet acceptance of this aspect of people. The upside is that when you do encounter support, bravery, altruism or just good old fashioned kindness, it's a real joy.

Also, echoing pp's, you can never truly totally know somebody. Everyone can change, or be unpredictable, and we all hold parts of ourselves back.

I'm 52 and have another 15 years to go. Maybe then I could spend a little time researching the stuff I'm interested in and learn to play bluegrass violin!
Don't wait june. Your fingers will be fucked by that point, it'll only frustrate you.

You're absolutely right about the joy of unsolicited kindness etc, nicenewdusters, ...and thank you.

You do have to accept people as they are -
that's a very grown up thing which has taken me a long time to fully understand.
You can still feel annoyed with them though!!

How days can become like groundhog day, just relentless at times.

How fast time will go, years pass like the blink of an eye.

Not having summers off anymore, miss the long lazy summers.

Looking back on photos. When the are immediately taken I usually think 'urgh' I look awful. But as time passes, I realise how good I looked in many of them!

One good thing, is that how the older I have got, the more confident I have become - in myself, my opinions. I worry much less what others think.

Oh and that you will never grow out of getting spots!

One other for me, that 'contraception' is drilled into you so much as a teenager that you start to think that you will become pregnant the first time you have unprotected sex. That it is an almost certainty.

You then realise that it is actually quite hard to get pregnant and that I actually would never get pregnant and that I would have to re calibrate what I envisioned my future to be.

That my beloved family would die, leaving me oldest. That my sil would turn my db and dns against me. That my dc and dh would be my only family. That I could die before reaching my most wished for dreams. That my dc could get accepted to wonderful university and i could fail to come up with the money for tuition. God, how i wish that i could have a shoulder to share my troubles with....dh gets angry if I'm hurt...which hurts more. I really miss my mother and grandmother and aunts.i also wish that i had known that i was pretty back when I was, instead of seeing all my flaws.
....and to the person who thinks that uneducated women win the jackpot by marrying educated money earners: independence is a wonderful attribute. Being taken for granted bc he knows you can't leave is heartbreaking.

So much here I can relate to! Many of us facing incredible hardships that we couldn't even have imagined when starting out. The agony of divorce, depression, SN children (your heart breaks for them), fear of poverty, loneliness, isolation, illness, aging parents... my dad was rushed to hospital last night and is living - if you can call it that - his last days. Maybe hours.

I wish we could always have this openness and compassion on MN, without the usual nastiness and arguing.

Supporting my adult DD as she discovered she had a genetic degenerative disability that will lead to being in a chair at a young age and unable to be the independent woman she is and that could be life limiting.....I want a magic wand.....I want to stop crying at night knowing that every day she is in pain....I want to know it will be alright.....when I know deep down that life isn't fair and that it wont

That your adored stepson can meet and quickly marry someone that manipulates and lies her way to isolating him from the rest of his family. You expect other members of the family (you thought were intelligent and intuitive) to see through her because her behaviour is as obvious as a cartoon villain and yet they actually support her in her strange narcissistic queen bee ways until the whole family fragments and is destroyed.

That it is really hard to just keep going. I'm so burned out from working for about four decades and can't stop yet. I'm lucky I have a 'good' job and am well paid but still, I'm done. I just want to get off the damn work train. I am so tired.

That it is too late to go home. I more than likely never will, to stay that is. I will most likely get that awful phone call with the news I've lost my mum at some point in the fairly near future. I really thought I'd retire and spend some quality time with her. What an idiotic thought.

That my kids won't just magically become settled and safe and that I can stop worrying about them.

That I won't retire and get old with my best friend. She didn't make it to retirement.

That missing the people we love never gets easier.

💐💐💐 for all the heartbreak here.

Finding out your husband had an affair with a man old enough to be his his grandfather!

Hating my job, and finding it hard to find another