So This is Growing Up

I feel like I’ve been “grown up” for a while now. I’m really not all that dependent on my parents, financially speaking, I live on my own, I travel alone, work full time… I can say with a sense of certainty that I’m no longer a child, for better or for worse. But there’s something they never tell you will happen when you start to really grow up. You start to see the world for what it is. You start to feel the pain shown on the news because things tend to strike close to home a lot more often. People die, people let you down time and time again, and parents betray you.

In the middle of my own struggle with pain, I am also watching the people closest to me struggle as well. I’m trying to cling on to that optimism, that spirit of youth that says anything is possible and a people are inherently good, that my life will be good. But life isn’t always going to be good, and I’ve definitely been learning that the past few weeks.

This is what I’ve been learning:

People are always going to let you down, they will betray you and they will mess up. By opening yourself up to other people, you are opening your heart up to pain and rejection. We are selfish and we are flawed and our hearts are far too simple to stand the disappointment. Being let down by other people is part of being human. But more than anything, I also believe the other part of being human is forgiveness and grace. Without these two things, our lives wouldn’t be worth living. We would live in an angry world with even more wars and terror than we already have. People can surprise you with second chances, but you’ll never know if you don’t let them in again. It’s worth the risk, trust me.

Parents are not perfect. This goes a lot with what I was saying before about people letting you down. We think at this age we have finally come to a place where we can relate to our parents on a person to person level, rather than parent-child. This not only opens us up to see their humanity but also leaves us surprised when they do something we thought only can happen when we are young. This has its advantages and disadvantages.

We have emotions for a reason. When something comes into our lives and rattles our perfect routines of smiles and sunshine, it can be confusing and difficult to understand. Our little hearts are not meant to be hurt this way, to feel betrayed or abandoned or left to go one when someone we love has vanished forever. So our emotions get jumbled up and confused and we laugh when we want to cry and become numb when all we want to do is scream. Ride it out, don’t fight it. Laugh if you feel laughing, scream if you need to scream, and for God’s sake, cry like there’s no tomorrow. Emotions remind us we are still human, that we are still here, breathing and living. Embrace them. Holding them in, convincing yourself you’re not angry or sad or depressed when you really are is toxic. It will kill you and every relationship you have.

Death is not a “natural part of life.” That statement is a paradox and fallacy. Death is not part of life. Once again, it’s something our hearts just do not understand. They don’t understand how someone can be here one day and gone the next for no apparent reason, with no explanation. A very good friend of mine once said “The reason death never seems to make sense or settle in our hearts is that we were never made to understand death. When we were created, we were created as eternal beings.” I don’t think there’s anything to say after that.

That same friend told me that she believes that sometimes shit just happens and there’s no reason for it. As much as I love this friend and respect her opinion, I disagree. I believe everything happens for a reason. Everything is connected and leads to another, like the domino effect. Everything leads to good. Everything will be good in the end, if it’s not good, it’s not the end, right? So in the middle of all the much and turmoil and pain I have to know that it’s all leading to something. I mean it’s already taught me about grace and the way to handle tragedy, and I’m convinced even better things will come as well. It may be 2 weeks from now or 20 years, but I know I will look back at this time, and all the trying times in life and see where they have lead me and what happened in my life as a result. I have to believe that, otherwise, what’s the point?

So this is growing up. Our parents don't hide the bad stuff, and sometimes they end up being the bad stuff. People leave, people die, people hurt us. Growing up is about learning to deal with it, about holding on to the good, about never forgetting what it was like to run barefoot through the grass your dad just cut on the last day of 2nd grade. Nothing to fear, nothing to worry about.