Was there a moment in your life when you did something, perhaps made a decision, that made you realize you were an adult?

I think that when I faced everything falling apart in my life, and I chose the right thing to do rather than the easy thing .. which also happened to be the thing that nurtured my children too but at the sacrifice of my dreams ,.. THAT is when I realized I was an adult. I was in my early-mid 40's.

I never talked about this with my children, but I suspect they are aware.  I didn't sacrifice for them in order for them to feel indebted to me.

I began to suspect that I was an adult at the age of 73 when I walked away from a woman who resembled those whom I had wasted most of my life on.

I didn't really become an adult until age 49 when I threw my narcissistic husband out after 28 yrs of marriage.  I'm still alone at 72 and very happy.

When I got popped for a DUI and realized that Mom and Dad couldn't get me out of it. 

Yes, in the early 1960s when I was 18.5 years old, I took a residential job almost 50 miles away from home.  Mum was distraught.  I was the only daughter and had brothers who did not have to help around the house at all (nor in the garden) whereas I had to do mum's shopping every Saturday afternoon and that of an elderly neighbour (I worked 9 - 5 Mon. to Fri. and 9 -12 Saturdays).  I had to help with the batch baking every Tuesday evening after getting in from my full-time job, do the ironing for the 5 of us on another evening and help mum change the sheets on everyone's bed and brush down the stair carpet (with a hard bristled hand brush) every Saturday morning before doing the above mentioned shopping.  Three evenings a week I attended evening classes, in another town, to get qualifications in English, Shorthand and Typing.

My brothers did nothing except, sometimes, watch Dad 'tinker' with his motorbike engine. My aunt and two of our neighbours continually told mum that she worked me too hard and expected far too much from me.  She disagreed and said she was ensuring that I would become and good housewife one day!!!  I think she meant SLAVE.  I couldn't go out to see my friends until all chores were done which meant I saw very little of them.

This all came to a sudden end when I saw the advertisement for the job far away from home in a country area, which had few buses. The single journey took me 4 hours!!!  Mum was distraught when I said I had been given the job and was leaving but it was the making of me and the best thing I EVER did.  That was the day I was allowed to grow up and be the real ME.  I never returned home on a permanent basis. 

It was through taking that job that I met the man I married a few years later.  My mother saw no wrong in how she treated me, it was how her generation (of women) had been brought up and she believed that was normal but others of her generation (aunt and neighbours) did not agree with her and realised that women should not be slaves to their family.

I guess it was when I was 18 and got a job with room and board in a town 300 miles away from home. I stayed until the job ran out 8 months later.

I think I started to catch on when other boys/young men my age called me "sir" in conversations, because I'd become a military officer.  I suddenly realized by pinning those insignia on, I'd assumed a power & responsibility I hadn't realized was coming.  If I told those kids to do something, they'd do it.  If I told them to do something wrong or something that got them killed...wow.  

After being conscripted into the Army at 20 in 1965, i realised i was an adult the Day we marched through Sydney(Australia) on the way to Vietnam in 1966

I married at 18, still a kid. The first time I held my son and I looked at his face for the 1st time, I realized I was an adult at 19. It hit me that I had to be responsible for the rest of my life.