growing up is strange

originally posted on my Substack

growing up is strange. did they ever tell you that? some days you’ll feel like you’re just walking through rain. some days you’ll feel lost, like it’ll never be the same.

growing up is hard. did they ever tell you that? there’s change and there’s heartache, there’s leaving behind the home you love. there are people you’ll lose, and sometimes you’ll even lose bits of yourself.

did anyone ever tell you that?

because i can’t remember anyone ever telling me that.

do you remember, all the days when we were kids? we’d dress up, put on fancy hats, pretend to be grown up. we thought by now, we’d be somewhere… bigger. better.

we always thought we’d be something more. we thought we’d be independent, we thought we’d have the run of the town.

we were always racing toward it.

another year older
another year closer
closer to being the age we wanted
closer to being grown up.

but now it’s been a few years. now i’m standing in the place i wanted to be, now i am walking that bridge, that bridge i will never be able to cross back over, the bridge we kept racing to get to.

now i am here and i am not ready.

did you ever think about that?

do you remember those days? those days when we were just kids? our days spent running in the sunshine. we could roll in the grass and blow dandelions, make silly faces, and be weird and crazy and fun. and the world didn’t seem to mind.

i miss those days.

did i ever tell you that?

but now i am older.

i am taller.

now i can finally reach the top shelf.

but i can’t help but long for my childhood days. the days that seemed to slip by so fast. time is a strange tihng. i keep trying to catch it, to hold on tight to those old times, but, always, they slide away like wind through my fingers.

sometimes i walk the same streets i walked as a kid. sometimes i stand beneath the same trees. and all the time, i wonder where the time went.

where is she now? the little girl i used to be? am i still her? is she still me? those are the questions that float through my mind, and i wish i had the answers. but doesn’t appear to be that easy, does it?

my heart has been broken and pieced back together more times than i ever thought it would be. but still, somehow, it has pieced itself back together again nonetheless. still, somehow, i am still walking, walking, walking this path.

where are you? who am i? my soul keeps asking. where are we going? oh, if only i knew.

but all i really know right now is that the future ahead is clouded. it’s like fog on a window, on a rainy day, and i’m staring out, waiting and wondering, wondering what’s out there.

i don’t feel ready.

but maybe that’s okay.

maybe life isn’t meant to be planned out, like an outline for your novel. maybe it unfolds in chapters instead. maybe growing up is painful because you’re losing parts of yourself. but then you’re also growing into yourself.

maybe, sometimes, you just need to keep going.

into the rain. into the fog. into the mist.

and trust that your feet will find the right path.

they will. eventually. even if the path is long and rocky and steep at times.

so for now, growing up is strange. and i don’t feel ready.

but for now, maybe, that’s okay.

I know this is a tad… what? Longer? Deeper? than what I usually write here. I try my best to be cheery and humorous for y’all, but I must confess, I’m not that way all the time. And this was one particular thing that was on my mind a couple weeks ago, so I thought I might write about it and get these thoughts out of my head onto the page, so I hope you shan’t mind. <3

Yours,

Isabelle