Growing Up is Hard

by Marissa Stride

Growing up is hard.

How truly basic of me to say. Nonetheless it’s true, growing up is hard.

When I was five the world was simple: eat, play, sleep, repeat.

Listen to everything Mom and Dad say, go to kindergarten and color the whole day. Life is simple when you’re five but growing up is hard.

When I was ten, the world became a little tougher, but nevertheless easy. Go to school, do your homework, then play with your friends before eating dinner with your family.

The only trouble you had was that you didn’t know your times tables. Growing up is hard.

Suddenly you’re in middle school and have to look and act a certain way.

This is when you meet the people you hang out with until you graduate.

This is when you hit puberty and the world just got a lot harder. This is when I learned I had no idea who I was. Because growing up is hard.

Next, you’re fourteen and going into high school at the bottom of the food chain. But you were just a king in eighth grade.

Everything’s different now though because the seniors can’t stand you.

In fact, most of the school can’t stand you simply because you’re a freshman. Did you do something wrong?

Probably not but it doesn’t matter because all that matters now is that 4.0 GPA that many try for and many don’t get. Growing up is hard.

Now you’re 18, a senior in high school. You have a part time job and you stopped caring about that GPA because now you have to decide what to do with your life.

You have to decide if you’re going to college and if so which one?

You have to decide if your job is more important than your grades

And if your grades are more important than your mental health, and you’ll decide that they are. Because that’s what your peers act like and your teachers tell you. Growing up is hard. Now you’re graduating. You’re moving out and starting your life, And it’s so overwhelming but you act like you’re fine because everyone else around you is fine, right?

College is right around the corner but you ignore that,

You ignore that because you best friend will be moving out of state at the end of summer And, you want to spend every moment you can with them, before you never see them again. Being a grown up is hard. We’re about to graduate but we have bills and have to go to work, because our parents raised us right.

They raised us to pay for our own things and we don’t mind

Until the stress gets to us and suddenly we feel like we can’t breathe with every little thing drowning us.

It’s okay though, because it has to be. After all, we’re all grown up.