If you’re like me, then you probably understand feeling like you should have everything figured out, and the crushing realization of knowing you don’t.

Ten years ago I graduated college, and if you knew me then, I am so sorry.

See, I thought senior year I was the best version of myself. I had been in therapy for four years, recovered from an eating disorder for two, dating someone I thought I would marry, had a great friend group, an internship I loved, best grades of all four year… then I graduated and I started to lose it all.

Looking back, I was wildly depressed, living with severe anxiety, had an alcohol problem… I was a mess.

I lost my friend group almost immediately upon graduating, I was fired from my first job, and it just got worse from there.

I think the hardest part wasn’t actually that things were falling apart. It was that I had this picture of what I was supposed to be doing; a picture that everyone else seemed to know how to paint except me. Everyone seemed to be doing all of the right things, and I felt like I had missed the class where they taught you how to actually be an adult (and this was coming from the “mom” of the group).

Then this week, I found myself sitting at my kitchen table once again facing the feeling that I should know what to do. Except this time, I wasn’t a twenty-two-year-old trying to navigate a career or a breakup. I was a wife, a mother, a daughter, a homeowner, someone with a decade of “real life” behind me. This was the version of me that was supposed to have the answers.

Except I didn’t. Not even close.

There’s this weird dichotomy of being an adult. From the outside, you can look like you have your shit figured out — a successful career, a loving spouse, kids, a house, a life that looks exactly like what you thought adulthood was supposed to look like. But on the inside, you’re quietly praying no one calls your bluff.

In some areas of my life, I actually feel like I do know the answer. Like at work. I spend my days being the person trusted to get things done. The person people turn to when things are broken and they need the playbook for what to do next.

But there is no playbook for when a loved one gets sick. There’s no playbook for how you explain that to your three-year-old, or comfort your loved ones. You show up, and you do your best, and figure it out as you go. Life isn’t paint by number — you have to figure out the colors yourself.

The secret no one tells you is that you never arrive at the version of yourself who has all the answers. You just become the version of yourself who can handle not having them.