Saying Good-Bye to the Good old Days

I've been thinking a lot about growing up lately.  Sometimes it feels like everyone I know is growing up around me and moving on with their lives.  For example, one of my best friends since high school is getting ready to move to the other side of the country.  She joined the Navy, went to basic training and all that last September, but she has been stationed about an hour away from where I go to school, so really, things didn't change much.  We could still hang out on the weekends and probably saw each other more often then if she were to have stayed back in Ohio or gone to school somewhere else.  But now, she's leaving for like, a long time.  She's going thousands of miles away, not just an hour.  Once she is done in San Fran, she's gonna go on a ship in the ocean somewhere!  That's a big deal!  My brother, Matt, is getting deployed to Afghanistan in July.  Well, technically, he is going for three months of training in July, then leaving for Afghanistan for 9 months.  But still, he will be gone for a year.  Gone to a different country, a different continent, it might as well be another world.  My youngest brother, Sam, is leaving to follow in Greta and Matt's footsteps in August.  He'll be heading to basic for the Navy.  He'll be closer to me for a while, just like Greta was, but eventually he will get deployed too.  A year ago, all three of us kids still lived at home.  By the August, my parents will suddenly be empty nesters.  How did that happen?  I'm sure they are asking the same question.  Often times, I forget to add myself to the list of people who are growing up and moving ahead in their lives.  There are a lot of times when I don't feel like an adult at all.  I forget that I was the first of us kids to move away.  I forget that I'm growing up too.  I feel like everyone is leaving me, when in reality I have already left my home.  But still, it doesn't change the fact that I don't like that we are growing up.  It is scary!  I think I have posted similar thoughts to this before.  Even though I know I love it here at Judson, and I have a major that I enjoy, there is still so much in the future that can happen.

I think when we are children we have a very limited view of what it means to be grown up.  Children don't know how much they don't know.  It is crazy that the older you get, the less you seem to know.  But it is so true.  When I was a kid, I knew everything I needed to know.  I knew that I had a family who loved me, parents who would take care of all my needs and most of my wants.  I knew that I was gonna be in school through elementary school, middle school, and high school.  The decisions I made involved what I was going to wear and what snack I wanted after school.  There were very few unknowns in my future for the next 5-8 years when I was a kid.  I knew everything I needed to know.  Now, now I feel like there is so much I don't know!  In fact, I know how much I don't know.  "Its what you learn after you know it all that counts." -John Wooden.

Growing up, becoming an adult, its not as fun as it looks.  It's really kinda painful sometimes.  I want to go back to being a kid and knowing everything.