As a kid, I was ready to rip my hair out if it helped me grow up faster. Now I’m willing to rip my hair out if it sends me back to being a kid. This is what happens when kids rush into adult life and then realize that they never learned how to live in it. I am a partial victim of this situation, as I didn’t bother to learn how to cook or play nice with the other humans, which is affecting me now. The real victims of this tragedy are those kids that get to become adults and can’t get a job or live on their own because they didn’t learn jack squat in the free trial period of their lives, resulting in more homeless and illiterate people throughout America. Other victims have a job set in mind and don’t bother with anything else, such as learning other skills that may have been helpful or getting connections, then when they do attempt to get the job they don’t meet the basic requirements and end up working fast food places for the rest of their miserable lives.

One mistake adults make when talking to kids is saying that growing up would be the best thing to happen to you as long as you’ve lived. What they don't tell you was how miserable you were going to be while getting to the top. They always made it out to be nothing but a smooth ride until you have kids, then get a job to support them. That’s basically the only thing they wanted you to know so you would look forward to growing up. What they didn’t tell you about growing up is what I’m going to tell you about. So sit back and open your mind because you’re going to learn today.

They never tell you about how much you’re going to change until you realize you’ve changed. They will never tell you how much you’re going to hate yourself for changing who you are. They will never explain how hard it is to get through the potholes down the road. They refuse to explain the darker side of things, the late nights, the temptations, the thoughts, everything; everything that makes you want to see the end before you’ve just begun. They’ll never tell you how hard it’ll be to get over the one you gave your everything to. They’ll also never explain how it feels to see your best friends, people you swore your life to, would briskly walk out on you. They’ll never explain the absolute pain of being a teenager. But this is all part of growing up, right?

I remember always being told about how fun growing up would be. But looking at it and going through it now, I hate to say it, but it’s not fun. The long nights you lay awake wondering where it all went wrong and wishing you could have saved that friendship, or how you should have said this instead of that to this person or to that person. You never hear about how miserable everyone was growing up. Yeah, you have good times, but for as many good times in life that there are, there is bad. You’ll have 1,000 good memories and 1,000 bad memories; and you’ll easily forget 500 of those amazing, beautiful memories, and only remember those horrible, miserable moments that you stayed up so late wishing you could just stop breathing so you’ll end the suffering.

One of the hardest things about growing up is learning how to manage things that your parents or legal guardians took care of for you. Examples of this soul-crushing burden include taxes, managing a monthly budget, getting a job, paying bills, paying rent/mortgage, realizing that adulthood wasn’t as great as you pictured it, and most importantly, not realizing how much you took for granted as a child. One thing that really gets me about growing up is expectations. When it comes to expectations related to me, they’re failed. I say it this way because not only the expectations I had for life were failed, but the vast majority of expectations everyone else had for me also failed. Almost every single expectation that was placed on me has traveled through all nine circles of Hell and are currently in Outer Darkness because there’s nowhere lower for them to go. I expected my teenage years to be like Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I thought everyone was going to love me, and if I said that I was sick I’d have people raising money to cure my nonexistent cancer. This obviously didn’t happen because I have about 7 friends and most of them don’t even go to the same school as me.

I don’t care what anyone says, growing up isn’t fun. It's full of pain and agony. Growing up is like trying to turn around on a one-way street. It’s full of feelings and events you’ve never thought you’d have to experience, from meeting who you thought was your best friend, only to have them stab you in the back, or to how your once close friends are just mere faces in your memory, even looking back and seeing faces you recognize, but now have no memory or meaning behind them. As a teenager, you're always changing, whether from hormones or experience life has thrown at you. The person you are now probably isn't the same person you were four or five months ago

One of the worst things about growing up is the scars you get, as well as give. It’s the worst thing in the world, especially when you give yourself these very scars and for reasons you barely understand, but in the moment, it is the only living thing that seems reasonable. Even if you regret doing it, in the moment you didn’t know what to do or think. Only the Razor of Pain was there when no one else was. You don’t know where to go or what to do, then when you try talking to someone about it, they lash out and blame you when it’s not your fault for the problem.

One last thing they don’t tell you about growing up is how isolated you’ll feel. Not being into what everyone else is into so you unintentionally sit alone constantly, you sit there lost on what to do with yourself. You’ll come to realize that you feel best alone. Growing up is basically creating high expectations and dreams for the future then as the years go by you realize how horribly wrong you were and there was absolutely nothing that could have prepared you for the truth about this world. But in the end, it’s part of growing up