Never Finish Growing Up

Do you think you are finished growing up? If not, when do you think it will happen?

I wasn’t sure why, but since the age of 12, I did not want to grow up.  Maybe it was because I was in 6th grade, and realized that it was the last year of elementary school.  I feared jr. high and everything ahead of it, especially since I am very resistent to change, and received many remarks about being a stupid and bad person.  Knowing that I couldn’t avoid growing up only made me hate it even more.

I didn’t want the responsibilities and difficulties of adults, and was afraid I would not be able to handle them.  There were so many things I didn’t know.  I also dreaded the stereotypes I would have to live up to, and couldn’t stand the words childish and immature.  At 17, I wanted to end my life instead of turning 18 and leaving for college and the real world.  Not wanting to grow up had been one of the reasons I was suicidal in 11th grade.

Eventually, my 18th brithday and college came, and I learned many new things and found many other things I liked.  I realized that what I had feared wasn’t as hard as I thought.  I had known that growing doesn’t end when we reach adulthood, and many adults act like children, as if they never grew up.

Growing is a lifelong process.  We never stop learning, and as we learn we continue to grow, so we’ll never stop growing up.  As Alanis Morissette sang, "You live, you learn."  We could even go the oppostie directions by losing our abilities or forgetting what we learned or remembered in the past.