Facing the reality that my childhood days are over has been a big challenge to overcome. Like most of Gen Z, I spend my days enjoying being young and facing the world head on. Noticing that growing up, graduating college, and starting my life as my own person is approaching much faster than I originally realized sent me into a panic.
I found myself scrolling through one too many photos on my phone late at night. Looking at the time stamps gave me goosebumps. How am I already an adult? It felt like middle school was yesterday, but now I’m going into the workforce and starting my adult life. It was time to take a second and think: is growing up really as scary as I think it is?
Coping with growing up is a feat in its own right. The reality crashing down on me about my future and the sheer amount of responsibilities is horrifying. I knew I couldn’t leave the thoughts alone. So, coping with and becoming accustomed to the fears of aging became something that needed to happen.
My thoughts about growing up at a young age
I felt prepared -anxious, even- to grow up as quickly as I possibly could. I always felt way too ahead of and mature for the mindsets that the kids my age had. In terms of my education, I always succeeded and did beyond what was expected of me. With that, however, it made my life lack challenge. I was extremely isolated during my younger years in school because of how I sought to discover the bigger picture of all the situations in my life.
Especially when I reached middle school, I could not stop dreaming for the day I would be an adult and finally far away from childhood. I constantly felt like growing up was the best thing to look forward to; it was a way of coping with the struggles of not growing up fast enough for me. Dreaming about the day I would be old enough to control my own life was all I ever did.
However, when it came to the point in my life when I finally entered high school, everything suddenly started to spiral. I suffered (and still do) from clinical depression that proved debilitating in school. While my grades didn’t see the consequences of that, my mental state and social relationships saw extremely negative effects. With that, I decided that graduating early from high school was the only way of getting myself away from the depressive state I was stuck in.
The summer immediately after I graduated high school, it made me excited to be free. University was fast approaching and a gateway into an entirely new world was on the horizon. I thought that this was finally my chance to grow into myself.
My fear of aging
It happened one day without me noticing it. The small fear of aging began creeping up on me the day I moved in to college. Moving away from home for the first time was what kicked off my anxiety about the reality of getting older. I had never been away from the city I was raised in, and I suddenly was 4 hours away from home.
Later, the fear crept closer. I started meeting people from all over the world, even just in my first week of classes. It started to settle onto me how large the world really is. Up until the point of me reaching university, my town was all I truly knew my way around. The thought of having to navigate new places and new people was terrifying.
Never in my life have I felt so deeply scared for a prolonged period until I got to college. However, the fear was coming from something yelling in my own head. My mind would run quickly down a tunnel, circling thoughts of life after college, life, and work beyond what I could handle. I started to fear that college was not going to be a time I enjoyed. All this started happening as soon as I got to this new environment.
I convinced myself I’d have to transfer closer to home. It was freaking me out to the point that I couldn’t handle staying enrolled in university. I had no way of coping with this fear of aging at this point, and it seemed like none of the people I had met really felt the same. Everyone felt so self assured and ready and I was nowhere close.
Self doubt
When I was young I felt like I had everything in my future completely planned and prepared. But after reaching college, I began to doubt myself. It dawned on me that I had no true idea of how to manage my life without my parents, teachers, and mentors helping me. I became fearful of reaching out others because for most things. The reaction seemed like everything I asked was something I already should have been taught.
Graduating high school freshly 17 years old at the time seemed perfect. Looking back, it is not something I regret. However, it did mean that I was growing up much faster than originally intended. My childhood was quickly coming to a halt with the introduction of an environment consisting entirely of adults. I was a kid looking at the adults who were meant to be my classmates in fear.
Even if I had graduated at the time I was meant to, I still couldn’t come to terms with the fact that I did not think I was anywhere near ready to be an adult and make adult decisions. One minute I was drinking milk and eating pizza for lunch and the next I was living on my own and buying my own groceries.
How do I sign a check? How early should I make it to class? There was nothing that could have given me the experience I needed to feel ready. I was so drained from all of the revelations I was having about my life and I knew there had to be a way of coping. I had to take control of my fears somehow, even if I wasn’t taught how to.
Acceptance
Learning to accept the fact that growing up was going to happen one way or the other proved to be my most successful way form of coping. I never thought that growing up was going to be something easy. At the same time, I never thought it would be something I would have a hard time with accepting.
I was prepared for when the time where I wouldn’t be a child anymore when I was younger. So, from there, I decided that nothing should stop me from getting comfortable with the idea now that time has finally arrived.
Beginning to make the effort to learn things as they presented themselves became the usual. While I wasn’t prepared for every adult situation that would come up, I made the attempt to learn from each experience. Even when I was scared, I tried new things bearing the thoughts in mind that new experiences are scary. Accepting the reality of the situation proved to be the most effective way for me to grow up.
My coping strategies
The main coping strategy other than accepting the truth in order to rid myself of fear was being present. I made the conscious choice to put myself in situations that were outside of my comfort zone or thing that I had not tried before. The whole “adulting” thing came with more than paying bills and taxes. I wanted to find out what it was all about.
I also invested myself into hobbies that I could enjoy. While distractions aren’t permanent solutions, it was completely helpful in the process. I realized that part of becoming adult meant managing my time to enjoy myself instead of being in a constant state of worry and distress over the future.
Coping is an entirely individualized process, so what I found most helpful was nothing near what anyone else could have told me when I began my adult journey. I knew that finding myself was not something that would happen overnight. However, I wanted to do what I could to make myself comfortable in an awkward stage of my life transition.
My current thoughts about getting older
Currently, I’m am gradually preparing myself for the end of college. I am getting ready for the next stages of my life. Trying to believe that even when I’m scared, everything will work out naturally has been keeping me moving towards my next graduation.
I know that moving forward in life, there will always be things that are scary. There will always be something I don’t know how to do. I feel like I’m slowly getting the grasp of how to function as a productive adult.
Online, there are tons of resources on how to be a functioning, literate, and educated adult by people in Gen Z just like me. I know that I can grow up into a person I’m proud to be without the fear of getting older breathing down my back.
