Why Growing Up is so Unexpected
I have never felt so grown up.
These past 2 weeks I have: turned 19, helped a friend with their relationship, drive to my friend’s house after they called me crying.
I’ve been helping friends through relationship issues, thinking about my future, worrying about money, getting ready for university (by procrastinating buying my textbooks). I have never felt so mature and grown up. It has been quite a week.
At heart, I have always been the mature friend, being responsible and helping my friends. Though, as a teen/kid, you are dealing with very trivial problems. No one really tells you (they do but you don’t really expect it) about the really complex problems you face as an adult.
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When you get older, your problems get more complex and you have less experience/idea about how to handle them. It can get really scary when you face with a real-world problem that you have never really even encountered before. Like relationship problems. Those are so freaking confusing and hard to deal with.
Though, despite all the fear and scariness of facing true adulthood, there is something refreshing about it. After facing this weird tension in adolescence between being viewed as a child though expected to act as an adult, you finally get to experience the freedom you so hoped for. Albeit, filled with unwanted responsibility to control your life and decisions, it’s freedom nonetheless.
As I grow into the beginnings of adulthood, I do look forward with anticipation. An anticipation that is filled with a mixture of fear and hope. Where I face the scary reality of the world as well as the hope it can offer. Both the nightmares and pleasures one can endure in life. I look forward to it all with anticipation.
I just hope everyone may do the same because no matter how old, we are all always learning how to be adults and how to live. I just hope you can do it with some optimism and hope to enjoy your life.
Stay safe and look for the small pleasures in all the terror within the world. View the world through the eyes of a child, while acting with the mind of an adult.
