There’s something people don’t tell you about growing up. They talk about getting older like it’s this exciting promise of independence and freedom. And yes, some parts of it are. But no one tells you about the heartbreak that comes with it. Not the heartbreak of a relationship ending, but the heartbreak of time moving forward and knowing that you can never go back.
For me, the heartbreak isn’t really about physical age. It’s the emotional part of growing up. Like the moment you graduate high school and suddenly everything that used to just happen to you now depends on your decisions. You’re not just passing time anymore, you’re building your future. And every step forward is a step away from who you once were.
And the scariest part isn’t only that you grew up. It’s realizing everyone else is growing up too. One day your parents have gray hair. One day your little puppy is suddenly twelve years old. Your older brother is twenty-three. Your grandparents are in their eighties. And it’s like: wait… when did all this happen? When did life fast forward like that? When did the people who used to feel frozen in your childhood start aging too?
So yes, sometimes growing up feels like mourning the worlds you’ve lived in before. You lose the place on the corner that you used to grab dinner from after your brother’s baseball games. You lose the shows that defined your childhood (like Stranger Things ending this year). You lose the sleepovers at your gram’s house where she made bacon and eggs in the morning. You lose Toys R Us and Pokémon battles in the backseat of the car before every kid in the world had phones.
Sometimes I feel like I’m running out of time. Like I’m holding all these past versions of myself in my heart, and I’m mourning them, even the ones I didn’t fully appreciate when they were happening.
Being 19 is weird. Some days I feel so grown, other days I’m just a kid again, playing Mario Kart, forgetting for a moment that the world is spinning so fast.
But here’s the hopeful part: maybe growing up is not about losing. Maybe it’s about gaining new chapters, even if the old ones are closed. Maybe we’re not meant to stay in the same era forever. And maybe the reason it hurts is because it matters and because the memories were real and they meant something.
Growing up forces you to learn how to live life forward while carrying every version of yourself you’ve ever been. And if I’ve learned one thing from constantly living in nostalgia, it’s this: you have to enjoy every moment of life, good or bad, because one day it’ll all be just memories. And maybe the most beautiful part is that there are still so many memories we haven’t even lived yet.