A week ago, I turned twenty-four. I’m now officially in my mid-twenties. But I still don’t feel like an adult. Sometimes I just think, “How did I get a job? And an apartment? I’m too young for this!”

It’s weird, though, thinking about what would make me feel like an adult. Sometimes it seems like there are these invisible dividing lines that have nothing to do with age, and I have trouble relating to anyone on the other side of that line. I find college students on the T annoying, but I also can’t relate to people who have their lives together in the way that I’m still working towards, even if they aren’t much older than me. There are some people who in a serious relationship or are married whom I have no trouble relating to, and I can talk to people with higher-paying jobs than mine.

But the dividing line, I think, is owning a house. That’s where I stop being able to relate to you. It’s such a grown-up, responsible thing to be able to own a house, and I don’t think it’s an experience I’ll ever have.

I work in publishing, so I’m never going to have any money and will never be able to buy a house on my own. And even if I was married, it’s hard to imagine having enough money for a house. If I did buy one, it would be in Massachusetts, and housing prices here are ridiculous. On realtor.com, I looked up what the approximate monthly payment would be on a 3-bedroom house in the Boston suburbs, and I have a hard time imagining that I’d ever make that much money in a month, let alone be able to pay for a house with it.

For the heck of it, I looked up the price of a five-bedroom (yeah, I know that’s a lot of rooms, but bear with me) house in Brookline. The cheapest one was $1,248,888. Then I decided to see what a five-bedroom house would cost in Omaha, Nebraska. The cheapest one there? You have to see it to believe it. Yeesh. I do love Boston, but I don’t think living here is worth that much.

Maybe I’ll get lucky and hit the jackpot, but if not, it’s entirely possible that I may never feel like an adult. At least there are probably a lot of other people in the same boat as me, though. No one my age has a house yet, and I’m realizing why so many people who go to college in Boston end up leaving the state. I guess together we can be the generation that will never feel like it crossed the adult line.