The Thing About Growing Up

The thing about growing up is that you don’t really feel yourself getting older while it’s happening. When you’re living it little by little, time doesn’t really feel like it’s passing at all. But it does, and you simply start having these moments that catch you off guard. Moments that make you wonder when you got so old.

It all starts innocently enough. You get to seventh grade and you see some second graders while you’re walking home from school. They’re playing tag in the park and you wonder if you were ever that short. Next you’re in high school and you wonder if you were ever as ridiculous as those obnoxious middle school kids. Then you’re a senior, and the freshman look so small.

It continues like that for a while. You have this feeling of older, but it isn’t really solid yet. You don’t quite feel old exactly, but you know that there are younger people all around you. Shorter people who still rely on bicycles and rollerblades as their main transportation. People who might still have a bedtime. But you drive a car. And you have for years.

Maybe it’s when you turn twenty, or friends start graduating from college. Or when you get your first real, adult-feeling job. Or maybe it’s when you have a friend get engaged for the first time. But somewhere in there is when the shift happens. When you start wondering how you got so old. When before, you used to only wonder if you were ever really that young.

But the thing about growing up is that while it’s happening, you get to watch your friends do cool things. You get to not really feel older while seeing people you love graduate college and get boss jobs. You get to see them get promoted, turn into parents, get married, buy houses. All of it. These same people you used to rollerblade with around the neighborhood. Now, they’re just all grown up.

And then one day you realize that you’re an adult too, just like your friends. Somewhere along the way, while you didn’t even realize what was happening, you grew up too.

Sometimes I look at my friends, the ones I had sleepovers with in middle school, and I’m so impressed by who they’ve grown into. They do amazing things in the professional arenas they’ve entered. And some of them are raising tiny humans who are turning into cool young people. [A lot of those cool young people, I’m secretly hoping they’ll become my friends too.]

Then there are the friends from high school and college. They’re also out there doing all those same cool things. I swear, some of them are such grown ups as they navigate health insurance paperwork, negotiating new job offers, and cross country moves. I used to meet them for coffee in a neighborhood coffee shop. But now I often drink it in their living rooms.

While they were growing up, I was too. And there’s been several coworkers turned friends that I’ve made during my own adulting, who now I watch in amazement every day. They were peers turned mentors, and somewhere in between friendships formed. They are the people I look up to and the ones I share my scariest dreams with in the most casual of conversations. Because they dream big too, they protect my delicate dreams as safely as their own.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’m lucky. For all my life, I’ve gotten to be around people that I look up to. People younger than me and older than me, and a ton of people I’ve grown older with side by side. The way they’ve all bravely faced adulthood has always helped me face it head on too. Even on my toughest days, I’ve thought of them to find my own courage.

It’s something that’s been so cool to watch, my friends turning into real grownups. I’ve loved the phone calls talking over the big decisions, and the small stories about experiment cookie recipes gone wrong. But most of all, I’ve loved cheering them on along the way. The way they’ve encouraged me all these years too has shown me how abundant good things can be.