You still crave lemonade, but the taste doesn’t satisfy you as much as it used to. You still crave summer, but sometimes you mean summer, five years ago.
Alida Nugent, You Don’t Have to Like Me: Essays on Growing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding Feminism
I was (I think) six years old when I first considered what I wanted to be when I grew up. Growing up was a very pleasant and exciting idea back then. Partly because the idea of getting older was one filled with opportunities, dreams and all sorts of fun, but mostly because I genuinely believed that I could be a princess, or preferably a fairy when I grew up.
What I’ve learned about growing up in all these years is that it is a very confusing process.When you are a small child, it feels as if time can’t pass fast enough, you can’t wait to get older. To be a teenager where you stay up late, go out with your friends alone and just live life on your terms. Then when you are a teenager, you realise that although getting to try on new things is a whole lot of fun. It isn’t as great as you made it out to be, and as time passes you discern that there is a catch. As much as growing up is about looking towards what is to come, it is also about everything you leave behind in the process.
I was in 10th grade when my sister left for college after the lockdown. I would now sleep in our beloved childhood bedroom alone. It was the first time that she would be away from me for so long. I would lie in bed and just stare at the poster she had made, hanging on the wall. I would reread her favourite books over and over again. I would listen to Slipping Through My Fingers by ABBA and bawl my eyes out because it was the first time that I truly understood how hard growing up is going to be. I knew that she was gone. I went to drop her off but I still couldn’t truly digest the fact that she wasn’t here anymore. I used to look at the door every two minutes just to see her walk into the room.
Sometimes I wish that I could freeze the picture
ABBA, Slipping Through My Fingers
And save it from the funny tricks of time
The thing about growing up is also accepting the inability to fulfil all the hopes and dreams you safeguarded and carried throughout your childhood. “When we are older, let’s go to the same college and buy a flat so that we can live together,” I made this exact solemn promise to my best friend back in 7th grade.Now, I haven’t seen her in almost five years. While I still do get to talk to my best friend, it is only through a tiny screen. And the time taken out to converse is now reserved for more important topics. I tell her about my classes and the clubs I am a part of, and she tells me about her coursework and the rules she has to follow in her hostel. We can’t sit for hours on a park bench or take a long walk around the neighbourhood ranking our favourite flowers or laughing at our own silly idiosyncrasies.No matter how many times I look back at our conversations, I always feel upset, not particularly because things did not go the way we planned but because I spent so many of our conversations just talking and worrying about the future instead of savouring the time we had together.I was so desperately waiting for everything to be different that it took me time to understand the flip side of it.
Nothing will ever be the same again.
Anytime I sit and think about growing older, I think I lose my mind a little. I will never be a seven-year-old girl watching cartoons at 6 AM on a Sunday morning. I will never peek over the kitchen counter to see what mumma is cooking. I will never ride in front of my nana’s scooter or make up stories with my sister. I will never dress up in my mother’s old nightgowns and pretend to be a princess with my childhood best friend. I will never again feel what I felt when I read my favourite book for the first time. I will not wonder and think about random things in detail or entertain all the silly thoughts that go through my head. I will not be unafraid to ask stupid questions and I will not sit down with my mother to cover my notebooks for class or ask my father to knot my tie. Things will never go back to the way they were.How am I supposed to understand and accept all of this in one lifetime? Even as seasons change and I get more and more candles on my cake, I will never not mourn my childhood. I will miss it forever.
Sweet tea in the summer
Taylor Swift, Seven
Cross your heart, won’t tell no other
And though I can’t recall your face
I still got love for you
Another major part of growing up is forgetting. When you don’t remember what you did on your 12th birthday or what your favourite Barbie movie was called. Not being able to remember things that meant a great deal to you before, can take away your sense of belonging and being. When you don’t remember something you weren’t ready to say goodbye to yet.When you can’t remember the voice of a loved one you have lost, there is a prickly silence that accompanies the moment of realisation.But no matter how desperately you wish for them to still be here, no matter how quiet you are, you still won’t be able to hear their voice.There is nothing you can do to hear their voice again.
As time passes, it teaches you a plethora of things. You get to have all sorts of different experiences and develop new insights and opinions. The hardest and most important lesson that time brings with it is grief.It teaches you how grief is inevitable. It is circular in nature.It is quiet and sneaky. It moves on its tallest tiptoes and catches up to you on a random day. It makes you nostalgic about everything and everyone you have ever loved.It makes you look at old pictures of your childhood and regret even the thought of ever wanting to grow up.Grief is never desirable but it is so very crucial. It is the string that ties us to our past. It always serves as a reminder of what has been.Grief is the final translation of love.It is the only way we recompense for all that was left unfulfilled.It is the only way to hold onto things that have long been gone.
Mom, am I still young?
Can I dream for a few months more?
Mitski, Class of 2013
And as the world keeps spinning on its axis and time keeps slipping through my fingers, I desperately try to linger on the precipice of my childhood in hopes that I somehow still have five more minutes of sleep.
For more such stories about growing up and figuring things out visit Her Campus at MUJ.