Do you remember being a little kid and wanting to be a grown-up? Wanting to rush forward in your development, so that you can skip the awkward parts of transitioning to self-reliance? Being a grown up and wanting to be independent has been a natural thing that I had wanted, and I am sure many other people have shared the same sentiment. Due to the forwardness of time, I have grown from my childhood to progressively becoming an adult.
I realized the bitter-sweetness of the entirety of becoming older. I am about to finish my junior year of college, which means that the buffer between me and the real world is quickly diminishing. I realized this pretty quickly, right after I bought my first car. I was driving down the highway, on a four hour journey after finishing my spring break, having an emotional breakdown in the realization that I have become almost entirely independent. The heartbreaking thing of it all, especially for me, revolved around the fact that the days when I was a child, life was simplistically organized by the times that I could play outside, the times I could watch PBS, and the time that I would go to school. It is weird to think, to even conceive, that I could consider the future as a reality rather than the far off day dream that it was. I could romp around in the grass and hang out with my mom all Saturday if I wanted to. I think that my emotional breakdown could have been caused by the sudden realization that my baby days were over, and that the whims of my childhood are tragically over.
With that being said, I can't forget what it was like to be a child. The wonder and beauty beheld in simple-mindedness should not be forsaken. The bittersweet discrepancy of adulthood revolves around my genuine excitement for the notion that the future belongs to the brave, coupled with the idea that childhood ends sooner than one would hope. Being an adult is a difficult thing to do, from my experience, and the complaints of the social media-obsessed world that we inhabit reflect similar sentiments. Complaining about the diffic
Ultimately, what no one prepares you for is the bitter-sweetness of it all. The beautifully melancholic contradiction that is the act of growing up is one that is not easily accomplished. I had been working for a really long time at growing to be an adult (even written articles on it) and the sudden realization that my independence is solemnly by own is one that is uneasy.
