Growing Pains

Lets talk a little different today.

When you’re young everything feels so simple and safe. With your parents there to guide and protect you nothing ever seems like a threat and you feel secure. They always know what to say and what to do. Walking in a crowd doesn’t freak you out cos you’re holding your mother’s dupatta. Teachers who love caning would never touch for fear of your mother as she comes to your school every week to snatch those dreadful canes. You stumble and fall, hurt yourself. Your mother says you’re a strong boy and you recover that very instant. Parents are supermen when we’re young.

Then you enter your teens and changes happen. You stop telling your parents the truth. First it begins by altering the truth, then the lies and finally avoiding any kind of conversation. You start detesting their company. Your opinions are poles apart.

“Oh they are old. They don’t know anything. They don’t get me. They’re from a different era.”

Friends become our parents then, sort of. We confide in them and ask for advice. Make them our Facebook parents. All that used to happen with parents is taken over by friends. They start picking the clothes you wear and the places you visit. You watch the movies they ask you to and the music they like. We think we’ve grown up. We feel rebellious.

You start growing out of your teens and the actual growing up starts then. You start maturing little by little. Contact with parents starts, albeit gradually. You start confiding in them. They seem to understand you more. They start treating you like adults. Your friend circle gets smaller. Less friends, more acquaintances. You know everyone but only a handful know you. You make a perfect amalgamation of your actual family and friends. And that’s how it is from that moment on.

When I say "we" I might be wrong. I can’t really generalize as I have only lived the life of just one person. And that too not fully, I’m not even 18 yet. Or even if I’ve been someone before my present being then I don’t remember my past life. What I speak comes of my own rich experience with family and friends, keen observations and above par judgment skills.