When the World Was Still Growing With Me

I don’t remember the exact moment I stopped being a child. But I remember the slow ache of growing up. It was like watching your favorite tree lose its last leaf, quiet, inevitable, and suddenly bare. Adolescence didn’t arrive all at once. It crept in, clumsy and uninvited, whispering that nothing would ever be the same.

Back then, time didn’t tick, it stretched. A Saturday afternoon could feel like a lifetime. I'd lie on the roof of our old shed, arms behind my head, watching clouds move like silent ships across the sky. I didn’t know where I was going, but I was sure the sky did. My sneakers had holes in them, my heart had a thousand questions, and t".e world, oh, the world still felt like it was expanding with me.

There was a wonder in everything. In the way shadows changed shape in the evening. In the way your name sounded when the right person said it. Even the pain had a purity to it. A rawness that meant you were alive, becoming.

Middle school was a blur of loud hallways and locker slams. I was never the loudest, never the fastest. More like background noise. A supporting character in everyone else’s coming-of-age story. I listened more than I spoke, and wrote more than I shared. I was trying to make sense of myself in between algebra problems and cafeteria rumors.

Once, during a fire drill, I stood beside a girl named Eliza. She had paint on her jeans and eyes like storm clouds. She looked at me and said, “You seem like someone who thinks too much". nd she wasn’t wrong. I felt too much, thought too much, and held it all quietly. Sometimes I wondered if I was too much of something and not enough of anything else.

That’s what adolescence felt like. A strange dance of too much and not enough.

I remember standing in front of the mirror, pulling at my sleeves, wondering if anyone else felt this strange, this unfinished. My voice cracked, my skin broke out, and my mind lived somewhere between fantasy novels and reality TV. I kept hoping someone would hand me a manual. “Here’s how to be liked. Here’s how to belong.” But it never came.

Instead, I found refuge in music. It was my private language. I made mixtapes like love letters to feelings I didn’t understand yet. Late at night, with headphones in, the world softened. The lyrics became scripture. The beats were a kind of compass, guiding me through heartbreaks, hope, and everything in between.

Friendships back then felt like tides, coming and going, sometimes leaving you cold. We passed notes in class like secret missions. Swore we’d be best friends forever. Sometimes forever lasted a week. And still, every friendship left a mark. Even the fleeting ones. They were lessons in letting go, in accepting that not every story ends with a ribbon.

My first real heartbreak came from someone who wore too much eyeliner and smelled like coconut shampoo. Her name was Jade. She doodled song lyrics on her shoes and kissed me behind the bleachers. I thought that kiss would be the beginning of everything. It was actually the beginning of goodbye. She transferred schools after Christmas break. I found out from someone else.

I remember sitting in my room after she left, playing that one sad song over and over until the lyrics felt like a bruise. I wrote her letters I never sent, filled with the things I didn’t know how to say in person. I didn’t know it then, but that kind of pain,the quiet kind, it teaches you how deep you can feel. And how deep you can survive.

High school was a circus of masks. Everyone trying on versions of themselves. Jocks, artists, loners, rebels. I tried a few on too. Pretended to be unfazed. Pretended I didn’t care. But inside, I was always looking for the people who got it. The ones who didn’t ask me to shrink or explain.

And somehow, I found them. A handful of beautiful, messy souls who didn’t fit into categories either. We were a collage of weird laughs, honest conversations, late-night texts, and basement jam sessions. They were my first real mirror. With them, I was enough. With them, I didn’t have to be cool, just real.

We talked about life like philosophers, even though we hadn’t lived much of it. We planned futures that didn’t include cubicles. We believed in each other when the world didn’t. There was magic in that, being believed in before you believed in yourself.

Adolescence was full of almosts. Almost kissed. Almost said it. Almost brave. And each almost was a stepping stone to who I was becoming. I tripped over myself so many times trying to figure out how to be me. I wore sarcasm like armor. I chased approval like it could fill the quiet parts of me.

But with time, something softened. I stopped trying to be someone. I started becoming someone. Quietly, clumsily. Through heartbreaks and healing. Through bad haircuts and good conversations. Through all the moments that didn’t feel important until they were memories.

And somewhere along the way, I learned that growth doesn’t look like a straight line. It’s crooked and messy and full of wrong turns. But that’s the beauty of it. We don’t grow in spite of the confusion, e grow through it.

Now, when I think back, I don’t just see awkwardness and acne. I see bravery. I see a kid who kept showing up, even when he didn’t know why. A kid who felt deeply, even when it hurt. A kid who looked at a world that didn’t always understand him and chose to love it anyway.

That version of me? He was doing the best he could with what he had. And honestly, he did okay.

So if you’re there now, in the thick of it, uncertain, unseen, unfinished, just know this: you’re not alone. You’re becoming. And one day, you’ll look back and see how far you’ve come, how much you’ve grown. Not just taller. Wider. Deeper. Stronger.

And if you’ve already walked through that wild, wondrous storm called adolescence, take a moment. Remember. Revisit the kid you used to be. The one who dreamed big, cried hard, laughed louder than they realized. They’re still in you, you know. They always were.

The world was still growing with me then. And maybe it still is.

Because maybe growing up isn’t something that ends.

Maybe it’s just something we learn to carry differently.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough.