My mother often likes to recall the time she attended my first open house in high school and one of the assistant principals said in his speech, “As your child grows up and out of your house.” She always tells the story with a fake cry after she says those words, complains how much that speech upset her, and then goes on a rant on how she told me and my sister not to grow up.
I know at one point in time, however, that is all I wanted to do. I wanted to be mature and grown-up and a heck of a lot taller. Now that I’m in college, all I want is to be a little kid and be sitting on the floor watching PBS kids and Disney Channel (not that I don’t still watch them now). Sadly, though, this whole growing up thing is a part of life.
Yeah, I know. It completely sucks sometimes. The first time you have to go to the doctor’s office alone is scary. You don’t have any clue what to do and you start to fake it and try to remember exactly what your parent does when they take you. Starting college and/or moving out is absolutely terrifying. You are starting to get out into the real world and you really just start to wonder how anyone can do this?
Growing up, however, is just what everyone does. You change in almost every way imaginable: looks, tastes, ideals and what you want to be. You leave home and start to do things by yourself. And the thing is, this is all perfectly normal. It’s okay to grow up. Change is perfectly natural. It’s okay, however, for some things not to change at all.
You still watch the same shows that you grow up with. When you go home, you still cling as tightly as you can to the old high school friends you still hang out with and always tell the latest drama going on in your college life and they tell you about theirs and you both laugh over everything like you did in high school. You eat the same food and still dream about being what you wanted to be when you were little (even if that didn’t really ever change).
I am a prime example of this. I have changed my looks every which way to where if you didn’t look at my facebook profile you would never know I was born brunette. When I was younger (even into fourth and fifth grade) my favorite show was “Blue’s Clues.” Now I spend most of the time watching “Say Yes to the Dress” and the newest Marvel flick.
Still, some things remain the same. I love princesses and Disney Channel original movies. I still think of magical places I want to create and explore. I still complain to my best friends from back home about pretty much everything. I still want nothing more than to travel the world and my dream job besides being a writer and top notch journalist is to be a Unicorn Fairy Princess. It’s okay for some things to be like that.
So, really, the point of me writing this is to remind everyone, not just college students, but even really grown-up grown-ups that while you will grow up and that it’s just inevitable, it’s okay to not be a fully grown-up grown-up. It’s okay if things change, that’s fine, but remember it’s still okay that you want to be a Unicorn fairy princess as well.
