The Adult I Was Waiting For
There will be days when your inner child wishes there were an adult to fall back on—someone to tell you that everything will be okay. Someone to pick up the pieces when life becomes too heavy. Someone to sit beside you in silence until the storm passes.
I still remember one afternoon from my childhood. My mother and I had somehow locked ourselves out of our own house. A few neighbours gathered around, trying to rescue us—perhaps by breaking open the door or finding a way to reach the latch from inside. My father was away somewhere, and this was long before mobile phones. I remember crying uncontrollably, “Papa… tumi kothay go? Papa… tumi esho…”
For years afterwards, my family teased me about those words. But when I look back at it today, I don’t see a child crying because he was locked out of his house. I see a frightened little boy searching for safety. In his mind, his father wasn’t merely another adult. He was safety itself. He believed that if Papa showed up, everything would somehow become alright.
As I grew older, however, I realised there were many things I could no longer fall back on my father for. Sometimes because I feared judgement. Sometimes because I didn’t want to burden my parents with worries they couldn’t really help me solve. And sometimes simply because the world had moved into places unfamiliar to their generation. None of it is their fault. It is simply what growing up looks like.
Yet, what surprised me was that even after leaving home at sixteen and learning to build a life on my own, I never really stopped looking for that feeling. Somewhere inside me, I was still searching for an adult. Someone whose presence alone could calm the anxiety in my stomach. Someone whose wisdom I could borrow whenever life demanded decisions I wasn’t sure I was ready to make.
For the longest time, I believed such a person would eventually arrive. Maybe it would be a mentor or a partner or a close friend. Perhaps a therapist or even The Guru. Someone older, wiser, stronger—someone who would know what to do when I didn’t, and whose wisdom I could lean on whenever life demanded difficult decisions.
And to be fair, life does bless us with such people every now and then. They hold our hand through difficult chapters. They lend us courage when ours runs out. They remind us of our worth when we have forgotten it ourselves. Sometimes all it takes is one conversation, one hug, one sentence, to help us survive another day.
But no one can live your life for you. Eventually, we all reach that strange, quiet moment where the room falls silent. The phone doesn’t ring anymore. The advice has already been given. Your friends have listened patiently for hours. The therapist’s session has ended. The teacher has completed the lesson. Everyone who loves you has done everything they could.
And then there is only you. It is an unsettling feeling because your inner child is still waiting for an adult to walk through the door. Someone to rescue them. Someone to say, “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”
What healing slowly taught me, however, is something I never expected.
The door does open.
Only… it is You who walks in!
Not the version of you who has all the answers. Not the version who never cries. Not the version who has somehow become fearless or invincible.
Just the version who stays. The version who gets out of bed despite not wanting to. The one who cooks a meal when sadness has stolen the appetite. The one who keeps showing up to therapy. The one who apologises after making mistakes. The one who chooses to exercise despite having every excuse not to. The one who pays the bills, makes the difficult phone calls, survives another disappointment, and still tells himself, “We’ll figure this out,” even without knowing how.
That is adulthood. It is not made of a series of perfect decisions, but rather just presence… Just showing up, and holding on to resilience during the tough times.
There is something profoundly comforting about realising that you no longer have to spend your life searching for someone to save you. Because the person you’ve been waiting for has quietly been taking shape through every heartbreak you survived, every difficult decision you made, every boundary you learnt to set, every tear you cried in private, every crisis you navigated, and every morning you chose to begin again.
There is a beautiful moment in “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” Harry believes his father will arrive to save him from the Dementors. He waits… He hopes… He is certain that rescue is coming…
Only later does he realise it wasn’t his father at all. It was him. A future version of him, who was strong enough, brave enough, capable enough to become the person he had spent that entire night waiting for.
Maybe healing works in much the same way. Your inner child doesn’t need a superhero. They need consistency. Someone who won’t abandon them the moment life becomes inconvenient. Someone who will sit beside them through panic, disappointment, loneliness, failure and grief, and quietly whisper, “I’m still here.”
Maybe that is what healing truly looks like. Not becoming someone who never breaks. But becoming someone who never leaves themselves behind.
There will be days when your inner child wishes there were an adult to fall back on—someone to lift you up on the difficult days.
On those days, you will have to rise with the quiet understanding that you ARE that adult.
The one who will always be there for you through the storms.
And perhaps that is the greatest privilege of growing older. Not that life becomes easier, but that, somewhere along the way, you become the safe place you spent your whole life looking for.
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Journal entry
10th July 2026
9:39 PM
