Dear Growing Up,
I’m having a hard time understanding you as a concept and why you must come so quickly and abruptly. It really is quite rude and inconvenient. I mean who came up with the idea of letting 17 and 18 year olds decide their future in a matter of months? Is this what you’re supposed to feel like? Like that lump in your throat when you are holding back tears?
I wanted to be like Peter Pan and fly away to Neverland where I would never have to experience you. What happened to all the fun and games? The oblivion? The magic? I look back on my life and realize the moments where I saw some of the pixie dust fade away to reveal the truth.
For as long as possible, I would put off the stages of you. I wouldn’t wear make-up, I didn’t get my license until I was 17, I still feel like an innocent little child trapped inside a 17 year olds’ life. I don’t want to make any college decisions. I want to live my life in the moment and not worry about what’s going to happen for the next four years. I want to have an iconic senior year like people see in the movies, but instead I’m stuck here dealing with you.
Now I got a job. I haven’t even started and I can already feel the newness and the uncertainty of it. Everything in my life has been familiar, I generally knew what I was doing. I still had choices, but they all lead to a general path that most people take. Now I have to create my own path, and you are making this really hard. You, in fact, are crushing my dreams. I never wanted my life to be so routine and stressful. I never wanted to have to get a job to pay for things. I never wanted you. I wanted imagination and fun, a worry free life. I just wanted to always be a kid so it’s difficult seeing my childhood slowly fade away.
I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m just adapting to whatever life throws at me but you by far, are the hardest to adapt to. I feel like you have just been slowly creeping into my life with increasingly bigger milestones that I am not ready to step over, yet somehow I manage.
Maybe, in reality, you aren’t as bad as I first thought, but you are very hard to come to terms with. With you comes the true freedom of a young adult, but also the higher risk of making stupid decisions. You bring new ideas and possibilities and ways to achieve childhood dreams. You bring choice and maturity. You are the beginning of the future. Although I won’t be going to Neverland, I can still find a different sparkle of pixie dust in the next chapter of my life. Until that day, I will continue to loath your existence.
Not so sincerely,
A Lost Girl