Why are we so scared of growing up?

This blog is for my beautiful babies of 2008 and 2009 — the Class of ’26.

For the ones who still have posters on their walls, playlists that feel like diaries, and dreams that are bigger than their bedrooms. And for all the boys and girls who, one day, will take those posters down, cut their hair, pack their bags, and quietly begin a new life of their own.

As Alec Benjamin once said,

“I’m not prepared for the future, there’s so many things that I just don’t know.”

And that line hurts because it’s true.

We feel it in the pit of our stomachs when someone asks us what we want to do with our lives or when we stress out about future plans. We feel it when graduation feels closer than it ever has before, when time suddenly starts moving faster, when childhood stops feeling infinite. Growing up comes with responsibilities, expectations, and pressure — but also with opportunities we don’t fully understand yet. Adulthood feels heavy before it even arrives.

Growing up is bittersweet. We won’t be kids again, and that realization scares us. We want to stay young forever. We want to remain naïve, optimistic, and dreamy high school kids who believe love is simple, that friendships last forever, and that the world will somehow always make room for us. We want to believe we’ll never change — because change feels like a nightmare.

One day, we’ll be someone’s mom or dad. One day, we’ll fall in love in ways that hurt and heal us at the same time. We’ll run businesses, study careers we once dreamed about at 2 a.m., fail exams, quit jobs, and start over. We’ll learn how to budget, how to forgive, how to stand alone without calling home every night. And maybe  just maybe — that future won’t be as terrifying as it feels right now.

What scares us the most isn’t adulthood itself. It’s the fear of leaving behind who we are right now. It’s the fear of losing our softness in a world that feels too harsh. It’s the fear that life will turn us into someone we don’t recognize.

But growing up doesn’t mean becoming cold. It doesn’t mean forgetting what made us us. 

This past December, many of us watched the final moments of "Stranger Things". A lot of people weren’t happy with the ending. And yes, everyone is entitled to their opinions. But if we really look closely, we’ll notice something quietly beautiful: closure.

The show began with kids playing D&D — unaware of how deeply life would change them. It ends with them playing one last campaign, while someone new begins theirs. And that’s how life works. Stories don’t stop; they evolve. Childhood doesn’t disappear — it transforms. We grow, we outgrow, and we pass pieces of ourselves on.

We are all standing at the edge of something unknown. And it’s okay to grieve the version of us that won’t exist anymore. It’s okay to cry over lockers, hallways, friendships, and moments that felt ordinary but will someday feel sacred.

Growing up doesn’t require us to have everything figured out. It only asks us to keep going — scared, hopeful, uncertain, and human. We are allowed to be afraid. We are allowed to move forward anyway.

So to the Class of ’26: We are almost done, we come do far, we loss a lot, we sacrifice a lot, we are just becoming the man and woman we once dream of. 

And even if we’re not prepared for the future, even if we don’t know what comes next — growing up is still happening.

And maybe, in time, we’ll realize that the future was never something to be afraid of.