Why do people always say to grow up when that's what we're doing? High schoolers are having kids and middle schoolers are doing drugs. Elementary schoolers wear make up and kindergartners have phones. If anything, our generations are growing up too fast, too rapidly.
Nor growing up isn't the problem. If anything, we're killing innocence. One day, every child born will be born into the world as an adult, no chance to age on their own.
I don't want to look at the world in ten years and see adults, only adults, despite the varying ages of the population.
My friend, only a year or two older than me, has a child. A son.
My friend, a year and a half younger than me, is afraid no boy will ever love her because she never wants to have sex. She is repulsed and unsettled by even the thought of it. She was only fourteen when she told me this.
My friend, who just graduated high school, started cutting her freshman year and never really stopped.
We live in a cruel world where it's either grow up with the people around you or find a way to cope: cutting, drinking, smoking. But there is always room for making mistakes when you are sloppy. The girl who cuts a little too deep. The boy who takes a few too many pills. The girl who has one drink to many.
Growing up isn't going to save us. Slowing down will save us, or at least some. Because if we slow down we will have more time to fix mistakes, more time to think things over. Time to contemplate putting away that bottle of pills sitting in your hand with the cap undone. Time to remember that there are people who care about you and expect more of you. The people around us who grow up fast try to force us onto the same path but that isn't right. Growing up isn't always the right thing to do.
Growing up isn't always right.
