Growing Up pt. 2

Growing up feels an awful lot like pulling teeth. They’re sore and always getting in the way but it takes a flash of pain to be ride of them. So we hold on for far longer than we should. Even after all this time I still haven’t learned to let go. Every time I think I’ve found the trick I realize I’ve only managed to trick someone else into forcing it from my white knuckle grip.

Growing up has a lot more of letting things go than I thought. I thought it was about finding your way in the world and taking responsibility and maybe finding someone to spend this life with. Theres a whole lot more growing in the growing up, more healing and becoming whole. I didn’t realize, I wasn’t expecting it.

I’m still learning, and I say it often enough it’s starting to feel like an excuse. But it’s the truth and oh how unsatisfied I am with where I’m at. I constantly wish to be further ahead, to be further down the road, to have figured it out. But I haven’t and I’m not, so I need to learn to be okay with the grey space I’m living in. The grey space is full of fire and I need to keep walking. Because the only way out is through.

At 21 I’m still growing up, still attempting to learn to let go. And I’ve yet to find someone to tell me how it all works. I want desperately for it to all be so much simpler than it is. It’s one of the parts of life that is so simply put yet so complexly achieved.

I suppose much of life is about continuing and continuing and hoping things start to make sense when you get where you’re going. But where am I going? It’s a question I ask myself often. My heart has yet to part with the answer. 

I am often mistaken for many years older has I am, as a teen this felt like a complement. In my twenties it just feels like pressure, like the already ticking clocks has been sped up. I’ve been playing catch up in my life for far longer than I haven’t. It is a tiring process to say the least. But the growing up I still continue to do.

I find the most loathed part to be accepting where I have been wrong, where I was the one who made the mess and I need to be the one to clean it up. At a young age I was presented with a mess created long before I drew breath and was told to live with it. I’m not sure I was set up for success in that way, what I’m trying to say is that I come by it honestly. 

I’m not sure if I’m doing this right, growing up, but I know that I’m trying. Because there’s the growing you do 1 through 18 and then there’s everything that comes after. No one really prepares you for that part. No one ever really said that the growing never stops and change can’t be avoided. So, cheers, to the ones who are still growing up. I know it’s hard but hopefully we’ll make it out of this together and maybe a little kinder than we went in.