Growing Up & Growing Apart
As a child you grow up in what seems like a happy home. Everything seemed perfect and innocent from the eyes of a toddler.Â
At 12 years old, you are trying to understand puberty; you are trying to understand why the world is why it is. You learn a couple of new words that are taboo at home. Your parents are trying to protect you from the world and the dangers that come with it.
At 13 years old, your mother walks out on your father, leaving you depressed, down and lost. You are old enough to understand whatâs happening, but too young to do anything about it. You try to be tough around your father, try to be strong in front of your brothers.
At 15 years old, you either have a lot of friends or you are weird loner with no friends. You will fall in love for the first time, have your first kiss, have your first date, have your first fight, hell you may even lose your virginity. You have stay-overs with friends, pizza nights, gaming or shopping days. You may join the cheer club or even the football team.
At 16 years old, you get distant with your parents and friends. You are a rebel. You are in love (or so you think). You think everyone and the world is against you. Every little thing your parents have forbid you from doing, you do the opposite. You get a lip piercing or a stupid tattoo just to piss the shit out of them. You fight with your friends cause they hate your boyfriend or âcause your friend ruined your plans for the night. Just plain stupid teen arguments.
At 18 years old, you think that you are matured enough to make your own decisions. You make plans with your best friends to travel after graduation. You choose the school you would like to pursue your degree in. You make your parents proud. When you finally do graduate, you get sad that you are leaving your friends and all that you love and familiar behind.
At 19 years old, you start a new life in a new environment. You make new friends on your first day. You meet someone new and fall in love only to get your heart broken again. Your high school best friend is now 3000 miles away from you. You havenât heard from them in months. They must have forgotten you with their new life in another part of the world. You feel broken and empty. You start to feel alone.
At 21 years old, the friend that you made on your first day is no longer friends with you. They turned out to be assholes that only seek your attention and pity, you start to hang out with a new bunch of people who seemed to understand you at the time. They filled the void that was left by the people in your life that has walked in and out through the years.
At 23 years old, you finally graduate with honors in your degree. You start to look for a full time professional job. You donât get exactly what you want at first. But you learn to love what you do. Your high school best friend is back in town. You catch up like nothing was a miss.
At 25 years old, you love your job. You are good at what you do. You made friends with the people you work with and travel around the world with them. Your high school friends are friends with your uni friends. Everything seems perfect. But you donât feel perfect, you still feel empty.
At 27 year old, you are still single with the same job. Your circle of friends start to get smaller. The people who you thought were your friends seems more distant now. Most of them are either in a serious relationship or married with children. You donât get to spend as much time with them, so you seek out others that are similar to you. At this age you donât feel like you have accomplished anything. The people who you thought were your friends are merely people filling up the empty void again. Your parents seems proud of you but you still feel empty. People donât understand you and you feel like they are not trying hard enough to understand you. So you start to distance yourself from everyone. Thinking its the right move. Is it the right move?
You start to realize that everyone grows up and everyone changes. Everyone falls apart and become distant. Their political views change from time to time. Their religious views changes too. Their perspective on life changes, especially when there are more responsibilities involved. But have you changed? Everyone donât  wanât to accept that they have changed. No one likes change. But yes you have changed too. Maybe for the better maybe for the worse. Its time to accept the change and accept that people are not always going to be in your life forever.
