On Growing Up

A short piece on youth, nostalgia, and what it means to grow up.

As a child I always longed to be older. During imaginary playtime I'd choose to be the modish, on-trend sister, sixteen and rebellious, or even her beautiful, insouciant mother that, despite what at the time I perceived as old-age, always had a careless glow to her. I'd morph myself into these characters every day when the clock struck ten thirty, then again when it struck twelve fifteen. And for those short periods, I had a little insight into what I assumed growing older entailed, growing longer hair, buying nice things, perhaps having a child. It was always clear that when I was at my earliest, not quite a toddler anymore, yet far from a pre-teen, the concept of growing up was intertwined with the concept of materialism. And both those things had their grasp on me. 

Outside the allocated pretending slots, growing older sat at the back of my mind. It was a forbidden excitement, and I counted down the days until I had a birthday, one year closer to being mature and sophisticated, like the girls, the daughters of my mothers friends, that would come round to our house occasionally, always looking so stylish, so put-together and so grown up. When I wasn't brightening the pages of a coloring book or jumping into puddles that were riddled with the dirt from the ground underneath them, I experimented with a secret dab of my mothers lipstick or an experimental spritz of perfume, in the hope that maybe the aging process would speed up and I could become just like those very same girls. I'm not sure what the appeal of maturing was to me, but there it was, almost something to look forward to, a future full of fortune, friends, maybe even boys. 

It was only when I got to my first year of high school I started wishing back that childhood I had so easily wished away. Going to 'big school' was a mile-stone, yet to some children, most often the ones that despite their bid to grow up would remain innocent and kind-natured, it was a challenge. The school hallways were brutal, the eleven year old children were the fresh meat and the target for a lot of the older children's provocation. Bullying was almost encouraged. And in those moments where I felt a kick to the shin or a laugh when I turned, it was easy to retreat back into my younger self, to wish to be back riding a bike down the street, drawing on walls in pen that would not rub out, taking a freshly sugared piece of candy from a nearby store. I started to look back on my childhood more fondly, even though I was still a child. I found refuge in my regression. 

Adjusting a little more to high school meant the fast-paced and intoxicating race to grow up started again. At thirteen, we could test the waters a little more than what was done once before. A swipe of lipstick was replaced with a sip of wine at the dinner table, a spritz of perfume was replaced with a playground whisper about a potential date with a boy who's name was never easily remembered. Every girl was a competitor this time, sometimes unwillingly. Handbags were a common classroom accessory, as were little pots of lip-gloss and mobile phones. The girls who refused to participate in the race were often the subject of ridicule and rumour when it came to playground politics, unless they were cast out all-together, where they were strictly encouraged into keeping their age-appropriate rambling to themselves. I stood on the line between outcast and insider with great unease, one slip-up could mean falling to a painful and tumultuous demise. 

By sixteen I had accepted my fate. I was out of education, finding the playground a battlefield in which I had no weapons. My demise was inevitable. By the time I had stepped out of the educational setting I spent those few years in, I could not prove myself to my peers anymore. If anything this made me long for adulthood more than ever. I was tired of the games that were played amongst us, the gossiping, often about things so childish it was hard to believe we aspired to be mature. I was tired of being looked down upon for not being able to afford the latest, most luxurious make-up, and even more tired spending all my money on the second best thing. In all my angst and struggle, I began to believe their venture into responsibility made them inferior to myself. My smoking habit, my many nights at the local bars and my experiments into relationships with boys much older than myself made me different, or at least I thought so. Unfortunately the sweetly-sour smoke that I exhaled with every second breath and the neon lights that I watched shine when the last orders bell rang were simply a cover-up, as were the golden blonde highlights and beautiful plump limps of the girls I grew to despise. All along our reasoning for our attempts to grow up was simple: it meant we wouldn't have to face ourselves as we were. When you spend your days trying to find out which boy in classroom 221 likes you, then a few years later, which night-club doesn't take ID, you deny yourself of the chance to face reality as it is in the here and now. And that's exactly what I did, and what many others would, and will, follow in my footsteps to do. 

Growing into adulthood, to me, never ended up being growing longer hair, buying nice things, perhaps having a child. Instead it was the beginning of finding the sense of self I deprived myself of in my youth. The melancholic nostalgia I feel when I look back on those days can only be truly understood if I include the foreword that I'd do it all over again, from my deprivation came the happiest of memories. I'm almost grown now, I have a year to go before I can start doing all the things i've always wanted. I believe, however, that my true growth won't come all at once. It will come through my experiences, my hopes, dreams, worries and fears, all ones I will go through in the upcoming years. Self growth is a process, and one I wish my younger self knew would never had come overnight. 

Reviews

[Brad Dehler]

Nice write... It is definitely a feminine view which i enjoyed
"Adjusting a little more to high school meant the fast-paced and intoxicating race to grow up started again. At thirteen, we could test the waters a little more than what was done once before. A swipe of lipstick was replaced with a sip of wine at the dinner table, a spritz of perfume was replaced with a playground whisper about a potential date with a boy who's name was never easily remembered. Every girl was a competitor this time, sometimes unwillingly."
Really good here. And the moving to new schools definitely rings a bell with me. This is a mature look back while keeping the magic of the moment, the feel. Great detail. Brad Dehler