The Fear of Growing Up
“Your dad is a d—. Don’t follow in his footsteps,” my mother often says. I don’t take her bonuses to buy a new car, and I don’t go on fake business trips, but I do burn the omelets just like he did.
My mother calls me the man of the of the house and says that I’m responsible for protecting her and my sister from the evils of the outside world; however, my main concerns are if I have enough money to buy a new jersey or if I can fit time with friends into my daily schedule.
My mom places responsibilities on me that pressure me to grow up faster, though all my relatives tell me to savor the final sips of childhood I have left. I still think of my- self as a child, counting down the days until the newest Star Wars movie, not having a care in the world about any real jobs.
My relatives, often flip their opinion at the dinner table and attempts to derail this train of thought. “What college are you planning to attend?” “Have you thought about scholarships?” and “you need to find a career that will make you happy” are questions I often hear at Thanksgiving and family reunions.
They mean well, and I understand that they want me to be a successful and functioning adult. But how much do they expect? Every answer of “I would like to go to Villanova and study engineering” are hit with suggestions of “why not an Ivy League like your grandpa?” and my seemingly solid plan is turned to dust by a family just wanting to help. All I really want is just to be happy, not six-figure successful.
With two older stepbrothers on the fast track to working at an office with a drive-thru, my father and stepmother pray that the saying “third time’s the charm” will prove true. My adult life seems so close yet so far, and I constantly ask myself if I’m ready. But every time I feel as if I am, a new challenge arises and I feel unprepared.
Being a prospect athlete, I felt ready to start signing with MMA organizations. I did the research and read through the paperwork, but then an agent came along and pointed out the real problems that slipped right under my nose.
I want to go to school to help me prepare for adult life, but as I sit in my classes I question how biology is going to help me become a functioning member of society.
At 18, Kobe Bryant was playing basketball in front of 19,000 people. At 18, I will be finishing junior year, probably struggling to finish finals. How did he know how to live and thrive 2700 miles away from his parents when I can’t even buy a car without my parents’ help? Having many friends
older than I, it’s easy to learn from their mistakes hopping into the adult world for the first time. Many take their first grand step onto the bridge between childhood and adulthood only to have that bridge collapse on them. Stuck at community college, stuck in a dead-end job, unable to move out.
It becomes clearer to me each time I visit them at the movie theatre that the education system doesn’t work for everyone. This plants in me a fear that, when adulthood comes for me, these worries will shake me off of my own career path.
The job of a parent is to prepare their child to live their own independent lives. Our generation is different than theirs, how- ever, and the way they prepared themselves doesn’t always work for their children.
My dreams of being happy fade away the closer I get to adulthood, why did it seem so easy as a kid? It’s easy to visualize following the steps to crossing the bridge to adult- hood in my head, but the execution is the hardest part.
As the diploma slips into our hands it seems that your parent’s full assistance slips out. The product they spent 18 years nurturing is suddenly one of their own community, and although my mother expects me to be the man of the house, I still have a few years left to become a man of the world.
