Be Careful What You Wish For
Independence: the one thing that we all wished for in our lives at young ages, yearning to be free from our parents and their rules. Even at a young age, I was so ready to grow older and be on my own, free from the expectations of my parents. What I learned once I got older, was that independence didn’t bring me all the happiness and freedom that I had once expected.
What I had failed to realize was the more responsibilities it brought to my own life.
The responsibility to take care of my little sister; to protect her as much as I could from our cruel world.
The responsibility of driving, that brought little fears on it's own.
The responsibility of having a job, to keep myself steady without the dependency of my parents.
The responsibility of keeping up on my academics, without any reminders.
The responsibility to be the student, athlete, daughter, sister, and friend that everyone needed me to be.
The responsibility to make everyone proud.
Being independent made me realize how much I truly missed the dependency of my parents; the one thing I had tried to escape my whole life. While I tried to hide it, I missed being able to go to them for every little inconvenience, even something as small as a paper cut.
As we get older, we start to recognize the comfort of dependency, and once we don’t have it anymore, we miss when we did. It seems liberating at first, but then the responsibilities that come with independence come through and we start to second guess our wishes. Even as someone who has been independent for a couple years now, I still miss being young and dependent on the adults in my life.
While I am still blessed to have the freedom and independence I have now, I never understood what would come with it. With real freedom, comes real world problems and responsibilities, some that I never really wanted to have. As I grow older, I try to cherish those times when I am dependable on those around me, while also recognizing everything I have done to get me to the independence I have earned and truly do cherish at times, regardless of its repercussions.
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