All Grown Up By; Sujal Mirchandani

 All Grown Up

By; Sujal Mirchandani

I always hoped, when I was young, that growing up would be something wonderful. As a child I believed that adults could do anything they liked, stay up as late as they liked, buy anything they wanted, and no one would tell them what to do. Having grown older now, I am beginning to see that I was entirely wrong.

It's a strange sort of middle stage to be a teenager. You're not quite a child anymore, but at the same time you don't really consider yourself to be an adult. Your parents may say that you're old enough to make your own decisions, only for five minutes later to tell you to clean your room. That's confusing.

What frightens me most about growing up is having to make my own decisions. At the moment, whenever I don't know what to do I can generally ask my parents for advice, but one day I'm eventually going to have to work it out on my own and I'll have to decide where I want to live, what kind of job I want to have, and what sort of person I want to be.

To be honest, I don't know.

I believe that adults often give the impression that they have everything worked out and that they know exactly what they're doing. However, I'm now coming to the realisation that they probably don't; they simply know how to act as if they do.

I always believed that growing up happened suddenly—such as one morning waking up and finding out all at once how to do your taxes, pay your bills, cook all sorts of things, and make sound decisions. Nowadays, however, I think it must be a slow process.

You have to pick up things one step at a time.

I'm looking forward to having more freedom, but I'm also going to miss being able to rely on my parents. I don't want to mature too quickly and I'd like to enjoy my youth while I still can.

I think that growing up is simply a combination of excitement and fear. I'm not ready for all of it yet, but I suppose no one really is.