In this day and age we have this perfect image in our heads of how we should be based on what society tells us. It tells us to always smile, always be happy, and to have our life together. I never perceived myself as perfect. And no one associates the word "perfect" with me. Based on my current calculations, I expect my journey of “finding myself” and “growing up” to last until I’m at least 29 years old. Here are my struggles of growing up

1. Growing up sucks because everyone starts to expect things from you that you have never even expected from yourself. It begins with doing your own laundry. Then those expectations change to you making your own meals, and then next thing you know, you have a job where you’re not only expected to show up on time, you need to do everything right all the time! On top of all this stress, life seems to always be raining on your parade because the moment you think you’ve got everything together, that’s the second things begin to fall apart. Welcome to growing up.

2. You face so many decisions every day of every week that go from deciding to study for that grade crunching exam or getting those 5 hours of sleep you desperately. Then you wake up one day and you need to decide whether you’re going to go out to dinner with your friends or pay for rent on time. Welcome to growing up.

3. The more you grow up the more you grow apart from the people you thought meant the most. Those best friends you thought you’d never lose have left you. You hope they know that they did nothing wrong, and you hope they don’t hate your guts. Welcome to growing up.

4. You have all this advice flying at you, and you always happen to choose the wrong advice to follow (and you ignore all the good advice.) They tell you to follow your heart, but it always ends up getting you in trouble and hurt. You fall in love too hard and too much with the wrong people. They tell you protect yourself and your secrets, but you end up closing yourself off from the world (and right people). Welcome to growing up.

5. You’re an emotional wreck. You have days where you don’t want to get out of bed, and then you have days where you want to stay out and party all night. You lose track of everything, everything from what time to all the things you have to do. You still have those raging hormones that get you good with mood swings, and it’s not even worth it cause you’re stuck as that ugly duckling that never “glowed up” during puberty that brought on these treacherous hormones.

This is the time you’re suppose to be finding yourself, but you can’t even figure out what Netflix series you’re going to indulge. How on earth can you even keep up with real world when you can’t even keep up with the Kardashians? Perfection is impossible, and the moment we realize that these struggles are real and okay to deal with, maybe things will get a little bit easier. I have no idea what my future holds; all I know is that when I do grow up, I'll be okay and I promise, you will be too.