People say getting older is bittersweet. I’m still searching for that “sweet” part. If you like growing up, I’d say it is an acquired taste like liking raw black coffee, or actually understanding how to put on fitted bedsheets (which is the life goal). Right now, in the sleep-deprived trenches of young adulthood, the sweetness of life is overshadowed by everyday evidence. There is this specific agony in watching your world expand while your bank account is in single digits. We spend our childhoods wishing time away, trading bedtimes for freedom from our parents, only to realize that freedom mostly consists of scheduling dentist appointments and figuring out why certain “people” aren’t replying fast enough.
We begged our parents to pay actual money to go to places like KidZania, put on funky plastic hats, and simulate working a 9-to-5 shift like absolute fools. We traded nap times for “freedom”, unaware that in university we’d die for those naps. They gave us fake little paychecks, let us pretend to be firefighters, and made us think the future was this big carnival. Back then, I didn’t understand why adults sulk about going to work; I just thought it would be like KidZania. But nobody warned me that real money vanishes the second you walk past a mall to be precise, McDonald’s.
Thinking back, there is something deeply humiliating when I realize that the person you once accused of “controlling your life” was actually just making sure you didn’t end up getting kidnapped. Because adulthood is basically just doing things your parents used to do for you, except now your mom doesn’t yell at you for not doing it. You have to remember your own appointments, buy your own clothes, do your own laundry, and decide what to eat three times a day for the rest of your life. And somehow, “What should I have for dinner?” has become one of the hardest questions I’ve faced lately because I’ve discovered something called “calories”.
As a child, I thought adults had everything figured out. Now that I’m nearly a full adult, I still ask Google “how long to boil eggs” and still end up messing it up. A part of childhood I’ll miss is how embarrassingly easy it was to be impressed. A new pencil box would overflow me with happiness. I would walk into a stationery shop with ₹300 and leave feeling like I had just received an inheritance. A new notebook made me feel instantly organized, and buying scented pens felt like guaranteed top marks because my topper friend used them. The science didn’t make sense, but I believed it anyway only to lose half of them in 3 days. Figuring out how to use my geometry tools would make me feel like “it’s me who’ll get into Harvard”.
If someone said, “We’re going out,” when I was ten, I didn’t even ask where. I was ready in twelve seconds. Now, if someone says, “We’re going out,” I conduct a full-fledged investigation: Where? Who? How long? Why? Is food there? How much money? Can I wear that? I also miss actual boredom. Not scrolling Instagram while complaining you’re bored, but real boredom. The kind where you lie on the floor for twenty minutes, stare at the ceiling, and then sit crisscrossing on the bathroom floor squeezing out blobs of expensive hand soap, mixing glue, stirring it with a spoon and convincing yourself you’re discovering slime. We were ridiculously good at entertaining ourselves. A cardboard box could become a house. A bedsheet could become a castle. A random stick could become a sword, a magic wand, and much more. Now give me five minutes without Wi-Fi and I start behaving like a widow staring dramatically out of a window.
I think I’ll also miss being driven around sitting in the backseat while my parents drove somewhere, staring out the window, pretending water droplets were having a race, falling asleep with my mouth open, and waking up asking, “Are we there yet?” three minutes after just asking it.
And then there are the tiny things my parents did that I never noticed. Cutting fruit and leaving it next to me. Keeping my favourite snack at home. Writing notes with my tiffin. Praying for me and a lot more. I used to find all of this irritating.
Growing up is gradually realising that the freedom we wanted was actually a trap. We thought freedom was authority, but in reality it’s the little things, like remembering your meds, cooking dinner by yourself and realizing that no one is coming to tell you that everything is going to be okay. We were so engrossed with the idea of growing up that we walked past the safest place we will ever know.
KidZania promised short shifts, guaranteed freebies, and a ride home with my mom. I made a massive career mistake leaving that pretend fire department.