The time they told me the truth about Santa Claus

Growing up – it’s that phase of life that you never fully understand until it happens to you. It is something that was quite alien to me as recent as a year ago. It’s funny how things change so rapidly in the span of 12 months. I don’t even recall when it started. All I know is that I am 23 and that I am growing up and that I truly and completely hate it with the fire of a thousand suns (that’s a stolen quote and I know it). Growing up has so many definitions in so many contexts. But to me, growing up is none of those things that are defined by others. Growing up is a very personal experience/stage in one’s life, different to each one of us in terms of the period, the emotions, the experience, etc. You can be 40 and never have grown up and you could also be 17 and be growing up. And until and unless you admit it yourself that you are infact ‘growing up’, I believe nobody else can determine it for you. You can’t wait for it; you will never know when it is coming. It just arrives without warning and when it does arrive, you know it.

Growing up to me isn’t passing out of school, or growing a beard or consuming alcohol or starting to date, etc as popular belief goes. Growing up to me is wondering if I’m too old for that kitten T shirt. Growing up is for the first time worrying how that butterfly tattoo on the back will look in a sari. Growing up is watching your best friend get engaged and wondering if you’ve missed the bus. Growing up is for the very first time wondering if being a rebel without a cause is a stupid thing after all. Growing up is watching a cousin you’ve grown up with, get married and move overseas and wondering to yourself if you wasted all those years being self involved instead of spending it together. Growing up is watching people pursue what they believe in and wondering, whatever happened to my beliefs?

Growing up is wondering if you should’ve been more involved in sports when you had the chance. Growing up is rethinking the choices you’ve made. When you are young, you just assume that mid-life/old age will never happen to you and you make all sorts of rash decisions at the spur of the moment, completely ignoring its long-term repercussions. Growing up is that stage in your life when you have no one but yourself to blame for not grabbing life by the throat when you could. It’s when you realise that life is not kind. Infact, she is one hell of a b***h, robbing you of your youth and zest every minute that you weren’t paying attention. And those minutes amount to a few billion.

Sometimes growing up is also supported by certain external elements, for eg, my family keeps screaming into my ears night and day to stop acting like a child and ‘grow up’. Your face starts reflecting hints of maturity and age and you wonder where your innocence went. Well, the b****h killed her too, in one of those few billion moments. You pile on 2 kgs and find it just impossible to lose. Stomach crunches give you back ache and you hear mum snigger and say, “Chinnu, your bones are not so young anymore, better take more calcium”. So you do what you never did in 23 years of your life, become nutrition conscious.

Growing up is when you have 3 day weekends and no particular plans. Growing up is when friends are not just a phone call away because they are working shifts or overseas or married. Growing up is not finding the butterfly pendant in the Airtel ad cute that your 18 year old cousin does. Growing up is thinking ‘What the hell was I thinking buying camouflage pants’. Growing up is disposing off even your favourite clothes because you finally accept that you will never be thin enough to fit into it. Growing up is when full volume on your headphones hurt your ears. Growing up is accepting that you are not as brave and strong as the front you put up.

Growing up is checking out the incredibly cute new recruit and realizing to your disappointment that he is probably a couple of years younger to you. Growing up is when eye candy seems plain silly. Growing up is finally realizing that being nocturnal is not normal. It is realizing how important 7-8 hours of sleep is to be fully functional during an 8 hour day shift.

I spend most of my waking hours just wondering at this transformation. Standing at the crossroad of life, wondering which way to turn, wondering if I’ve missed my exit a long way back. Key word – wondering. You are just constantly wondering at this not-so-wonderful and completely sudden phase of life.

I’m sure there are plenty of good features about ‘growing up’ too. But I just can’t think of too many right now. Let’s see.

Growing up is being able to pay for that upcoming mountain biking trip J. Growing up means being able to forgive and forget all those times when you thought your heart was beyond repair. Growing up is giving your mum a hug and saying sorry for being so difficult to deal with. Growing up means valuing your family enough to avoid using the word ‘tequila’ on Facebook because it angered them the last time you did.

There’s got to be a lot more positives to growing up, and maybe I’ll jot them down as and when I find them. I also believe life will be awfully easier and smooth sailing once I learn to accept this inevitable stage as a part of life. But then the transition phase is just so difficult, feels like all the foundation of what makes me who I am has been shaken. Then again, if the foundation can be shaken so easily, it probably wasn’t so strong to begin with, huh?

It is time for introspection. It is time for acceptance. It is time to welcome maturity and bid farewell to childish innocence and watch it walk into the sunset. Life does not end here; it is merely the end of an era and the beginning of another. I’m sure the b****h has a lot more antics up her sleeve for the coming years.