Don’t Wanna Grow Up: Adulting Memes That Had Us In Our Feels

Whether we like to think about it or not, we are all going to get old someday. Being a kid or a teenager may not always be a pleasant experience, but being an adult is worse in some ways. You may get your freedom — but you will also have bills to pay and tons of other responsibilities! Growing up is not an easy task, but we have some news that maybe will make you feel a little better. If you ever feel down because you feel like you’re not doing a good job, don’t worry. We are all going through it, and you’re not alone! Are you in need of some cheering up? In that case, this article might be the salve your inner child needs. Here are 45 memes that hilariously sum up what adulthood feels like.

Accurate description!

Thanks to our parents’ protection over us, we are usually sheltered from most dangerous things when we are children. Our parents (or legal guardians) are our guides to learning how to live life — but that changes once we become adults.

As you can see in this picture, this dog is carrying itself to places without the help of its owner. Well, adulting is basically the same thing. We often have to get through life without the assistance of our parents!

Maybe I’m getting older.

We would like to emphasize absolutely nothing screams “I’m becoming a real adult” more than feeling happy about household things. You know that feeling of joy you get when the house is clean, or when you get new sponges? Yeah, that’s what we’re talking about.

If you have felt that joy at any given moment, you better sit down because we have some news for you. You have officially become an adult. And being an adult means that things like new cookware sets will instantly put you in a better mood.

It takes some time getting used to this, okay?

There’s one thing that most of us struggle with, and that is waking up early in the morning. Unless you’re a morning person, you probably have to set up a bunch of different alarms and have a whole pep talk to convince yourself to get up in the morning.

Are you even an adult if you don’t get up late at least once a week? This meme perfectly represents those days that we get up half an hour later than we were supposed to, and then the rest of the day feels completely off!

Let’s talk about this.

As we mentioned earlier, everything that is house-related makes adults happy. Buying new furniture, washing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen before taking a long bath, replacing an old sponge — if those are things that will put you in a good mood, then you’re an adult.

However, adults do something else that is absolutely nuts, yet everyone knows all about it. Having a favorite stove burner. Even though it makes no sense, and there is often no logic, we all can point to our favorite of all the burners.

Sorry for being this way.

Let’s be honest: Cleaning the house is not that fun. While certain things related to housekeeping can make you feel better, doing house chores is tedious and annoying most of the time. Even if you like admiring the kitchen after you’ve cleaned it, you probably wish you didn’t have to clean the house.

We didn’t like doing house chores as children/teenagers, and we certainly don’t like them as adults. The problem is that when we ignore those tasks for a while, they pile up, and then we have to work twice as hard to get them done!

I promise you I’m trying really hard.

Life is hard. When you become an adult, you get to have the freedom to do all the things you wanted to when you were younger, and you also have plenty of responsibilities. In fact, you have so many responsibilities that you might not even have the time to do the things you want.

The repetitive routine of getting up in the morning, going to work, coming back home, going to sleep is exhausting. Considering that, it’s no wonder that lots of adults are on the verge of breaking down. When life gets tough, remember this trash can and its message!

It’s never too late…right?

When we’re young, we feel this awful pressure of deciding what we will be for the rest of our lives. To be honest, not everyone can make that difficult decision at 18, and that’s okay. How many of us are pushing 30 and still unsure?

Contrary to what people think, many people in their 30s and 40s are only now enrolling in college and pursuing the career they always wanted. If you still haven’t decided what you want to be, try doing what the meme suggests and get inspiration from children — they’re super creative!

How many years has it been?

Teenagers are all the same. Everyone wants to turn 16, so they can drive. Then, they want to turn 18 to go to college and live their own lives. However, while it feels like an eternity for us to turn 18, time flies by once you pass that milestone. 

It’s like you turn 18, and the next day you’re already 30. And if you don’t feel old yet, we suggest that you take a look at all the songs and films that came out when you were in high school. We bet they’re probably ten years old or more!

I want my mommy!

Like animals, humans also rely heavily on having an older, more experienced person helping us grow and learn how to survive. Usually, it’s our parents (or whoever raised us) that fulfill that role. The problem is that sometimes we get too used to having them.

We are confident that when you were younger, the adults who raised you would schedule your appointments. Until one day, they stopped doing that and started telling you to do it yourself. We have all been there, and we know exactly what that feels like!

Time for my well-deserved break!

As we said before, adults have plenty of responsibilities and very little time to get out and do all the partying they’d planned. If you are not busy with work, you have house chores to do. Sometimes, it almost feels like a neverending cycle!

Only the people who have tons of things to do and no time (or energy) will relate to this meme. If no one is going to give us some support, we’d better support and praise ourselves. Doing one of many late tasks is better than not doing any tasks at all.

Seems accurate!

Being an adult is a mixed bag, and sometimes we feel overwhelmed. The world is not the same as it was back when our parents were our age. Everything feels rushed nowadays, and it feels like we have no idea how to deal with that once we’re no longer teenagers.

There may not be a lot of stuff going on in this image, but one thing is certain: most adults reading this article will relate. Screaming in the middle of the day is the most accurate representation of what being an adult feels like!

Are we all the same person?

When you think about the fact that there are over 7 billion people on this planet, the idea that we’re all the same person seems kind of absurd. When we look at some of these memes, we realize that it is not absurd at all!

See what we are talking about? We bet you related to this meme. What kind of adult doesn’t plan on getting a lot of stuff done on the weekends but ends up not doing anything at all? That is, like, basic adulting!

Do all good things really must come to an end?

Trigger warning: this next meme will probably upset you a great deal. Psych! We promise we’re just kidding. Well, kind of. If you have been in this particular situation — and most of us have — you’ll feel this image in your core.

Making it to the second week of the month and having no money left? Now that’s something we have all experienced. Getting your salary in one minute and having to schedule payments in the next? We totally get why this woman is crying!

Don’t mind me, guys!

If you just got out of college (or you’re about to graduate) and you have to start applying for jobs, congratulations! You are officially becoming an adult. Wait. Are you not applying for jobs yet? Well, nobody said that adulting was easy!

You know you’re getting older when all your friends are getting full-time jobs or actively looking for jobs so they can support themselves. But as we said before, some of us take more time to find out what we truly want to do. If you haven’t decided yet, don’t worry. There’s more to life than work!

Whoa, slow down!

Remember when we said that once you turn 18, life goes by in a flash? Here is yet another meme to prove that we were right. When we’re kids, older people always tell us that life starts getting faster as you begin aging — but we don’t always believe them.

We don’t believe them until the years seem to get shorter and shorter. One day you’re a freshman in high school, and suddenly, you’re turning 25 and feeling like this woman — stuck in a speeding car with no brakes!

At least we’re not the only ones feeling it.

Do you know when you are just chilling on the couch, and then you have to get up, but you get dizzy? That usually happens when you stand up too fast, right? Don’t worry; you are not alone. That dizziness happens to many adults!

If you get dizzy and start seeing stars when you get up too fast, we have some news for you: you’re getting older. There’s no point in lying to yourself anymore — or in feeling embarrassed about it. We’re all getting older, and all adults have low iron, apparently.

Oh no!

If you are looking for signs that you are becoming an adult (or if you really want confirmation for some reason), one of the first things you should pay attention to is your memory. Are you having trouble remembering some basic stuff?

In that case, we have to tell you that there is nothing more adult than forgetting things and remembering them hours later. We bet that you make that same face once you realize that you forgot the wet clothes in the washer or when you’re not sure if you’ve locked the doors before you left the house!

Maybe I do need you!

When we are teenagers, we usually start to feel like adults the closer we get to turning 18. Once you reach that milestone, you’re supposed to do things on your own and live your own life…right? Turns out that that’s not at all how real adult life feels.

Being an adult is not easy and, while we used to refuse our parents’ help, we depend on their help to make it through adulthood. Maybe not every adult feels this way but, if you do, you’ll certainly relate to this hilarious meme!

See? It’s not hard to make friends!

Everything in the world is fascinating when we’re bright-eyed youngsters. We get to see new places and faces for the first time and be excited about it. Unfortunately, that feeling of fascination starts losing its strength as we get older.

Making friends when we’re children is all about enjoying the same things. If another child likes to play the same games you like, you instantly become friends. However, things change. It’s not about enjoying the same things anymore — sometimes, it’s about hating the same things!

I’m such an adult!

Yes, we know that being an adult is not exactly an easy task. But that doesn’t mean that adulting is all about the negative. There are some cool sides to being an adult, like getting to buy all the stuff you want to buy when you go grocery shopping.

Our parents never let us pick what we wanted to buy from the store. (Okay, maybe they sometimes got us treats.) And perhaps that’s why we want to buy so many snacks once we become adults. However, we can’t say that eating only Cheetos is healthy!

Why must you do this?

Grocery shopping is one of the main tasks on all our to-do lists. If you are an adult, you probably visit the grocery store at least once a week. And because we are always going to the store, it’s no surprise that we end up memorizing where every product is.

Now, is there anything more annoying than going to the grocery store and finding out that they rearranged every single aisle? When this happens, you have to try to locate everything once again — and you end up buying more items and spending more money on the way! The audacity.

But that looks kind of cool.

We remember getting excited about going to the mall and getting new toys. When we were teenagers, going out with friends or on a date was what thrilled us. But what is it that makes and adult heart skip a beat?

Things like this surely do make us feel giddy. Look at how organized everything would be if only we had one of these. We’re practically drooling. If this over-the-sink drying rack excites you, welcome to the club. You’re most definitely an adult!

Oh, wait — that’s me!

Part of growing up in a typical home is getting advice from our parents and many times, they handled a situation for us. But when and how do we learn how to make those decisions and solve those problems by ourselves?

Most of us have no idea, and that is why we may have so much trouble trying to be the kind of adult that younger people can rely on. It’s quite scary when you have to be the adult in a situation!

Sit down, honey, we have to talk.

Time flies by without us realizing and the next thing we know, we’re suffering from joint pain and back pain — even if we are in our 20s. Yes, other people your own age are facing those same pains! Don’t suffer alone.

This meme is perfect. Even if we feel young or look young (and thus try to reassure ourselves that we are young indeed), it seems like our joints say otherwise! Where is the IcyHot patch, and can someone bring me an Advil?

Who is watching my house?

Isn’t it kind of weird that we all seem to go through the same struggles? For instance, most adults seem to feel completely fake. And it looks like we all have the same woes when it comes to the neverending housework.

If you don’t struggle with the dishes and laundry, are you even a regular adult? If we leave the dishes in the sink for more than a couple of hours, they reproduce, and the next thing you know, you have a stack the size of a small building waiting to be washed.

No cap!

Is it really our fault that we don’t love getting older? Do we hate getting older just because, or do we have an actual reason for hating the passage of time? If we had to point out a reason for this hatred, we would say that the kids’ vocabulary is it.

Why do young people have this need to make up new words all the time? It’s almost like it’s a natural rite of growing up, and language naturally evolves and changes… Well, it doesn’t make us happier about all that time we have to spend on Urban Dictionary.

Yes, that’s got to be it.

For some of us, childhood was a fun time. We did almost nothing but play with our friends, and finishing homework and getting good grades in school were our biggest concerns. Unfortunately, all of that changes once we’re supporting ourselves.

This meme accurately represents what it feels like to be an adult who has a bunch of bills to pay. Sometimes, we even feel like we’re in that Dungeons & Dragons cartoon — it’s like we’re stuck in this loop and can never find a way out.

Is it even possible?

There are so many things required of adults that it feels like we are on an impossible mission to be successful. How can we balance our careers, families, minds, and bodies, and happiness when most of us work 40+ hours every week?

If we’re realistic about this, nowadays, we have to pick the things we want the most. A good job? A happy family? A healthy life? Many friends? Choose to focus on just one or two of those, or else you’ll end up looking like this cartoon!

Just leave me alone!

Picking up on the way we left our previous slide, one of the things that adults hate the most is having to answer emails. Is it not enough that we already have so much to do, but we also have to reply to emails?

We guess it isn’t wrong to say that we’re glad that fewer and fewer people are still sending emails. At least there is hope for adults that, in the future, there will be one less task for us to do!

I don’t want to do this anymore!

Grocery shopping is all fun and games until you get to the part where you have to pay. Is there anything more frightening than just standing as you watch the cashier ring up your items while the bill just increases?

No matter where you are now, you know very well what Ben Affleck’s face represents. It’s raw despair and regret (because maybe you bought something that you didn’t need)! Even if these days of panic are behind us, we probably still get antsy when we have to pay.

It sure feels neverending!

Who doesn’t remember watching the classic fantasy film The NeverEnding Story as a kid? This movie was really wonderful to watch when we were younger, but the name of this story starts taking on completely different meanings as we grow older.

What exactly is a neverending story when you’re an adult? Having bills to pay. Dealing with annoying people. Washing piles of dirty clothes every single week. Yeah, we all know those neverending stories. This is a friendly reminder to deal with the clean laundry on the couch.

So this happens to everyone, then?

Our parents wanted us to be good at basically everything that we did growing up. Our teachers expected us to be studious and excel in class. While we may have achieved that when we’re young, being a “gifted” person gets increasingly more challenging with the years.

If you ever feel bad for not doing something, try to remember that you’re not alone. It turned out that we were hard-working students back then. And don’t feel bad for not having the energy to be as hard-working now — you didn’t have any responsibilities back then.

Honey, you got a big storm coming!

The truth is that adults trick kids into thinking that being an adult is a magical thing. If you had a bad childhood, we suppose that becoming an adult is indeed a good thing. But in most cases, adulting takes a lot of energy and self-control.

We may not be thrilled about adulthood, but there’s nothing stopping us from staying quiet and secretly laughing whenever we hear a teenager complaining about how much they want to turn 18 already. Our smirk may even compare to that on Leo’s face!

Well, that’s awkward.

Becoming an adult means not relying on our parents to schedule our appointments, which is kind of upsetting. But there is something even worse than that. Hands down, one of the worst parts of adulting is having to go to the doctor’s office all by yourself!

Seeing all those strangers in one room and not knowing exactly how to proceed all but triggers one’s anxiety. Should you first talk to the attendant? Or should you sit down and wait for them to call you? Should you make polite conversation with the other people in the waiting room or just stay quiet? It is a lot to handle at once.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

This next meme is here to put the straight facts on the table. Apparently, it looks like being an adult comes down to going grocery shopping at least once a week — and being silly while we are at it. 

What do we mean by being silly? Who hasn’t gone grocery shopping and done this? We may think that we would be buying just a couple of things, so we don’t get a cart, but then we end up getting a lot of items and having to juggle them. The stubbornness is real.

That is pretty much it.

Have you ever watched that iconic Jim Carrey movie The Truman Show? If not, the film is about this guy being watched by the whole world from the moment he was born. Do you ever feel like that? When we look at these memes, we certainly do feel like we’re being watched.

This especially makes us feel like there’s someone out there creating memes out of our lives. The meaning of adulting is perfectly summed up in this image: eating in bed late at night, having little to no money, and constantly feeling on the verge of a breakdown!

Sorry, girl!

We have to work for a living when we’re adults — unless you’re an heiress to a multimillionaire fortune. And because we all work so much, we usually don’t want to do anything after work; we just want to go home and relax.

But we can’t work all the time; we need some fun every once in a while. The issue with going out with friends is we’re exhausted after a hard day’s work— and it’s hard mustering the energy to get out of bed once we’re all snug.

I’m proud of you, baby girl!

While we may not have painted a nice picture of adulthood, the point of this article is for us to see things in a funny light. And also, being an adult is not all bad. There are way too many good aspects about adulthood, like laughing at how your friends are adulting.

If this image doesn’t exhibit the concept of a mature and supportive friendship, we don’t know what will. The best part of being an adult is watching your long-time friends being adults and getting excited about the same adult things, like cooking!

And that’s okay!

When we are in our 20s, we want to have fun. Going to college is a great experience, partly because we meet new people and go to parties and such. But the energy to do that kind of stuff starts slipping away as we get older.

By the time we get to our 30s, the mere idea of going to a party and staying out until late at night is awful. Those kinds of weekend plans start giving place to other significant events, like staying at home watching a movie and sipping on a glass of wine.

So glamorous, right?!

Adulthood is all about wearing nice clothes, having a lovely apartment, going out with friends, working in your dream job, and dating a fantastic person. Yeah, not really. This next meme will show you what being an adult actually means.

That’s it. Being an adult is having to deal with back pain, knee pain, headaches, and other ailments. Oh, and there’s also a lot of stress involved in adulthood. But, hey, one day you will get used to it! Or that’s what they tell us.

Hopefully, no one will realize!

With the way that time flies by, it’s no wonder that most of us don’t even realize that we are no longer children. As we said before, it’s like one day you are trying to make it through high school, and then all of a sudden, you’re on your way to your first full-time job.

Because things are so rushed, lots of people may feel like they never aged out of high school and that they are faking their way through life. Adulting is being a child trapped inside an adult’s body and hoping that no one will find out!

This is so true!

If we are here to discuss honestly what it means to be an adult, then we have to tell you the hard truth. It’s not easy having to deal with responsibilities, deadlines, and bills to pay. And it’s certainly not easy maintaining a fitness lifestyle.

If you wonder why we said that staying fit is not easy, the answer is perfectly simple: the older you get, the slower your metabolism becomes. It’s like you keep on moving but lose your metabolism somewhere along the way!

Do I really need to buy all this stuff? Yes!

Having a job and receiving a salary every month but never quite making it last for more than a couple of days is part of adult life. Well, unless you have incredible self-control and can actually save some of your money.

But the truth is that most of us spend our hard-earned money on useless things. We are certain that you have at least a couple of items at home that you bought but never really used them. And like us, you probably regretted buying them as soon as you checked your bank account and saw that the money was really gone!

Already?!

One of the most interesting things about time moving so fast is realizing how long ago some dates are. For instance, when we think of the early 2000s, we usually feel that they were about ten years ago — but they were almost 20 years ago!

This confusion also hits you when you’re about to turn 30. How is it possible that people born in 1991 and 1992 are turning 30 already? It’s insane to think about this! And it’s no wonder that people react like Spongebob in this picture.

Hey, I’m doing my best!

The memes we showed you were pretty clear — being an adult is not easy. But all jokes aside, you have to keep in mind that you are not alone in this journey. We are all struggling out here to be the best kind of adults we can be.

Even if we don’t always succeed or are not always good at it, we are doing our very best to make it through adulthood. As you can see in this meme, it doesn’t matter if you’re not the adult that everyone thought you would be — the only thing that matters is that you’re happy doing your thing!