I read an article this week that basically scorned the whole #adulting tag as people wanting applause for doing what’s required of them as adults, and how they should get over themselves. Sure, I can understand how people might find it annoying, but I’d like to throw another light on it.

I’m an adult. I’m actually older than the article writer. I’ve been living out in the real world beyond my mother’s house since I was twenty-one. I rent a house. I have a car. I pay my bills. I’m also disabled. My partner of fifteen years is disabled, too.

My partner looks like an average woman in her early thirties. If people saw her out in public, they might question why we have a disabled placard for our car. If they saw her cane, they might immediately put it down to her being overweight. They can’t see the connective tissue disorder she has that makes her joints prone to dislocations, her balance problems, her low blood pressure that causes fainting spells or her chronic pain and fatigue.

My own disabilities are more subtle. Physically, I’m able. Unless I had a panic attack or meltdown in front of someone, or wore one of my neurodiversity pride t-shirts, they wouldn’t know that I’m living with autism, depression and severe anxiety. I pass well in casual interactions. I’m someone that people would assume had no reason to be unemployed, or to have failed to finish high school. But I’m on disability for very good reasons.

Living as we do, at home just about every day in a small village in a rural area, I imagine most people would expect our house to be perfect. After all, what else are we doing all day? I’ll tell you right now – it’s not. We have one big day a week when we go to town for shopping, medical appointments, and so on. It wipes my partner out for two days afterwards. By the end of the day, I’m exhausted, too. Interacting with people in crowded, noisy environments burns through my reserves a lot faster than people with less sensitive neurology. What we do on our ‘big day’ wouldn’t seem like much to most people. It’d be a day of errands that barely scratched the surface of their ability to cope. But when you’re starting with a finite amount of spoons, it takes its toll.

Once a month, we tend to do three things in our little village one after the other – visit the post office to collect our mail, take our bins to the local tip, and pay our rent. To do all three takes under an hour, but just about every time afterwards I say, “Well, yay for us for being fucking adults.” Why? Because it’s an achievement. Because even though I probably still have dishes in my sink and laundry in the hamper, we’ve got three things done that are vital to our survival.

I got told recently that I needed to lose some weight for my health. For several reasons, exercising at home is not an option, so my only choice was to leave the house. Given that I was essentially couch-bound by severe anxiety earlier this year, getting up and out has been a major challenge for me. Have I been doing it? Yes. How much weight have I lost? That’s not the point at all. This isn’t an inspiration porn story about a disabled person ‘overcoming’ their condition and riding a wave of success to able-parity. The thing that I celebrate is every time I put on my shoes and walk out the door despite the agoraphobia and anxiety waiting like wolves to bite me. I’m not overcoming anything. I’m gauging my level and weighing the cost versus benefit of doing something. And the days I don’t walk out that door? That’s fine. I’ve learned to accept that every day is different, and that some days I’m more capable than others of doing things.

For those who might think, oh, well the article writer didn’t mean people like you, she meant normal people, let me stop you right there. A big portion of the population has a disability. Sometimes it’s obvious, but a lot of the time, it really isn’t, and if you aren’t disabled right now, there’s a good chance you will be by old age. The great thing about the #adulting hashtag is that it’s about celebrating the little victories. It’s about giving yourself a high five for doing something difficult or unpleasant that you need to do for some reason or another. In a world that glorifies high successes but belittles everyday ones, it’s a breath of fresh air. I don’t think anyone who uses #adulting does it without a little dash of self-mockery, but that doesn’t mean it deserves to be labelled as worthless, either.

So, the next time you see a tweet or a post from someone celebrating the bare minimum, remember – you don’t know what it’s really like for them. They could be dealing with chronic pain, mental health issues, stress, grief, debt, or a toxic home or work life. They could be straining under a heavy course load, or struggling to find their direction in life. They could be sad, or lonely, or bored, and using the #adulting tag could be their way of cheering themselves up. Without being in their shoes, you really can’t tell. Sometimes, success is nailing a job interview, beating your personal best time, passing an exam or finding a partner, and sometimes, it’s achieving pants. Celebrating the latter doesn’t devalue the former, it just makes the world slightly less full of self-hatred, and for those of us who struggle to achieve the little things, it’s really fucking important on the path to self-acceptance. So, scroll past or block the #adulting tag if it annoys you, but don’t shit on those of us who choose to use it. A lot of us are shat on enough already.