text: It’s 5:36 AM, his alarm goes off and it’s time to go to work, brushes his teeth and gets dressed, heads outside to his car, takes a breath of fresh morning air, starts his car and takes off. As he shifts through each gear and sees the sun rise a little more, he can’t help but be thankful for how great his life is, even though he’s off to work at his shitty minimum wage job, he lives with his parents and is saving a lot of money, has a car, has a beautiful girlfriend who he can’t wait to spend the rest of his life with and a good group of friends. A few yawns later and he heads into work, the day passes by quickly as he’s cutting up with people at his job, and now it’s time to clock out, he can’t wait to head home and clean up because he’s got a date with his girl tonight. A shower and a nice dress shirt later, it’s now 5:45 PM, time to go to her house. As he leaves his driveway and goes down the road, he can’t wait to see his girlfriend, even though they were very young and hadn’t been dating for only a few months, they had been talking on the phone the night before about how great their future is going to be, one day they’ll be married, living together, eventually they will be blessed with children. It’s gonna be awesome. He arrives to her house and they leave together, they’re not in the car 10 seconds and she already is wrapped up in his right arm, the bond they share is unbreakable. They decide to take a trip to the park and just walk around together, they head off to a quiet isolated places in the woods and begin to kiss passionately. There isn’t a single lustful thought in either of their minds, just two teenagers in love with each other. Soon it’s time to head back to her house so she can be home on time, as he’s driving back they talk about how much they don’t want to leave each other but know it won’t be like this forever. They kiss goodnight and he heads home. As he shifts through each gear and sees the sun set a little more, he can’t help but be thankful for how great his life is, he never thought he could be this happy. This is his last night as a 17 year old, tomorrow he will be an adult, a grown up, he’s ready to face the world. Now he is 18, unfortunately his friend group has split apart, his girlfriend has broken up with him, and he now has to get a better job to afford living on his own and school. What happened? It wasn’t supposed to end this way, he had everything, how could she leave him when she told him she wanted to spend her life with him. Is this what happens when you become an adult? “I want to go back, I don’t want to live this life anymore.” It may have all been a blissful ignorance, but was it really ignorance if that was when he was truly happy. This marks the end of his childhood, now it’s time to suck it up and be an adult, it’s time to dread waking up every morning and heading into your dead end job that only pays enough to keep the lights on, it’s time to seek relationships but only be met with rejection and heartbreak again. Is this what it’s like to be grown up? I don’t want it, I want to be a kid again, bring back my childhood. - This is something I’ve never done before, I’m not even a big reader, but I’ve been in a bit of a dark place recently and this idea has been on my mind. I’m mainly posting to get feedback and see what others think that aren’t people I know.