Which part of growing up hit you the hardest emotionally?
July 14, 2025
Which part of growing up hit you the hardest emotionally?
30 comments
All of it. I don’t even know where to start. My mental health went completely down the toilet (being an at-the-time undiagnosed neurodivergent kid didn’t help) and I was just completely overwhelmed. I don’t deal with change very well and growing up is the very definition of significant personal change.
Having to work and pay rent and date.
Losing the hopes I had for myself as they got trampled by the realities and limitations of real life.
The never ending nature of labor.
I was 13 when I lost my dad. We left the place where I was born and brought up and moved to an entirely new city, leaving my friends and my childhood home. Didn’t get along with my mom until I was 21. I can’t begin to comprehend the depression and everything I had to go through during that period.
It was pretty crazy seeing people younger than me competing in the Olympics and in professional sports. Also some of the Love Island contestants being younger than me. I’m 23 and I have a child but I still don’t really feel like an adult a lot of the time.
In my early/mid 30s and realizing that time of ‘when you grow up’ has already arrived. My 20’s formed my 30s, my 30’s will form my 40’s. If I want kids, I have to decide that now. If I want to switch careers and leave the country for a while(my dream) I can’t necessarily prioritize relationships and kids now. If I do nothing, I’ll obtain neither. Time feels limited, decisions feel life changing, and emotionally, it can all be very heavy.
The hardest part for me has been seeing myself and my siblings grow up and start our own lives. Seeing my parents get older. It feels like just a few days ago we were just kids playing in the backyard, my parents sitting near a fire watching us. Now I see them 2x a year (we live in different states) and think about how I’d give my left kidney sometimes to go back to playing Pokémon and watching the Swan Princess with my sibs.
[removed]
I guess just how hard everything is. Once I got beyond the three year mark in my romantic relationship, it got so much harder to maintain a healthy dynamic. Once my friends started getting married and having kids, it got a lot harder to maintain close friendships.
And let’s not forget the never ending nature of work. The idea of having to get up and go to work five days per week for the next 40 years.
Holidays become kinda boring as everyone gets older (we have no new children in our family).
I don’t know that this was the hardest, but it occurred to me. I was so sad to graduate from high school because I knew life was never gonna be that easy, ever again. And it was not.
That you are supposed to know how to do life. Just like that…
Getting a bf was easy, keeping a healthy relationship was easy for us, accidentally getting pregnant when we both don’t want kids and both agree that termination is the best and kinda our only option 👍🏻, me crying in his arms after I found out and him later telling me that I was being a bitch for crying over it hit hard, me telling him in preparation that after the abortion I will most likely be heavily emotional from female hormones and maternal instinct and him immediately responding with “ ya no I don’t wanna deal with that” hit like a shotgun to the chest.
I hate seeing my parents getting older 😭 especially since they had me later in life
Realizing my dad physically, psychologically, and emotionally abused me.
My pets not having the same lifespan as me. Currently steeling myself for my 14 year old cat getting an ultrasound because the vet suspects she has early kidney disease
How difficult it can be to get pregnant when you’re finally ready to start a family
Being alone a lot more than I thought I would. Friends come and go and it’s harder the older you get to make new ones
Feeling so alone, like I had no safety net. If I messed up, lost my job, etc, I’d be cooked.
Growing apart with a childhood best friend. That was a harsh lesson on not getting too attached to people. I mean I still get attached but I keep boundaries, like an adult should.
It is still sad to lose the pure, naive ability to love a friend with abandon.
I am 40 and still in touch with several childhood friends, we love eachother but its an adult friendship, its a bit different. As it should be. But still different.
Knowing that my parents fucked up my life and I have to spend years/rest of my life trying to recover. While also having children myself.
Realizing that not everyone you care about will stick around. Losing people or drifting apart hits different when you grow up. It’s a tough lesson that takes time to accept.
Not having friends fucking sucks dude. I suffer pretty badly from mental illness that really reared its ugly head in my 20s. I’m thirty and so fucking lonely
Deciding to hand a child only to realize in the only person in my family with fertility issues
Probably when I was 15 and was in my first relationship, and then the months after we broke up.
I had been very lonely as a kid (only child who got bullied to the point of being suicidal at 14) and I just wanted SOMEONE to love me. I got my first boyfriend the summer after 9th grade. He was great and we made out, snuggled, basically everything but penetrative sex. And he made me feel desired emotionally and physically. Then he ghosted me when school started up again, and we didn’t go to the same school so I didn’t even see him after the ghosting.
It was miserable after I had gotten a taste of what being loved like that felt like. I was even more lonely and just craving physical affection. I dated multiple losers between 10th-12th grade just to have someone. None of them were good partners I just hated being without a romantic partner. He was my sexual awakening and I was changed forever after that summer. Like I realized I wasn’t a kid or a tween anymore, I was well on my way to adulthood and the kind of physical contact and relationships that come with it.
That life isn’t fair at all.
[removed]
Realizing that I couldn’t go back. The summer before sixth grade, I started having these little mini panic attacks, or maybe just anxiety attacks, where I was terrified that I was getting close to graduating from school and having to be an adult. In my area, sixth grade is the start of middle school, and it hit me hard. I was a little afraid of being in a new building with new teachers and all that, but mainly I was so sad that I was going to have to leave my elementary school. Already I felt like life was going way too fast, and I wasn’t nearly finished being a kid yet.
The fact that growing up was not all sunshine and rainbows like I had imagined when I was a kid, reality set in.
30 comments
All of it. I don’t even know where to start. My mental health went completely down the toilet (being an at-the-time undiagnosed neurodivergent kid didn’t help) and I was just completely overwhelmed. I don’t deal with change very well and growing up is the very definition of significant personal change.
Having to work and pay rent and date.
Losing the hopes I had for myself as they got trampled by the realities and limitations of real life.
The never ending nature of labor.
I was 13 when I lost my dad. We left the place where I was born and brought up and moved to an entirely new city, leaving my friends and my childhood home. Didn’t get along with my mom until I was 21. I can’t begin to comprehend the depression and everything I had to go through during that period.
It was pretty crazy seeing people younger than me competing in the Olympics and in professional sports. Also some of the Love Island contestants being younger than me. I’m 23 and I have a child but I still don’t really feel like an adult a lot of the time.
In my early/mid 30s and realizing that time of ‘when you grow up’ has already arrived. My 20’s formed my 30s, my 30’s will form my 40’s. If I want kids, I have to decide that now. If I want to switch careers and leave the country for a while(my dream) I can’t necessarily prioritize relationships and kids now. If I do nothing, I’ll obtain neither. Time feels limited, decisions feel life changing, and emotionally, it can all be very heavy.
The hardest part for me has been seeing myself and my siblings grow up and start our own lives. Seeing my parents get older. It feels like just a few days ago we were just kids playing in the backyard, my parents sitting near a fire watching us. Now I see them 2x a year (we live in different states) and think about how I’d give my left kidney sometimes to go back to playing Pokémon and watching the Swan Princess with my sibs.
[removed]
I guess just how hard everything is. Once I got beyond the three year mark in my romantic relationship, it got so much harder to maintain a healthy dynamic. Once my friends started getting married and having kids, it got a lot harder to maintain close friendships.
And let’s not forget the never ending nature of work. The idea of having to get up and go to work five days per week for the next 40 years.
Holidays become kinda boring as everyone gets older (we have no new children in our family).
I don’t know that this was the hardest, but it occurred to me. I was so sad to graduate from high school because I knew life was never gonna be that easy, ever again. And it was not.
That you are supposed to know how to do life. Just like that…
Getting a bf was easy, keeping a healthy relationship was easy for us, accidentally getting pregnant when we both don’t want kids and both agree that termination is the best and kinda our only option 👍🏻, me crying in his arms after I found out and him later telling me that I was being a bitch for crying over it hit hard, me telling him in preparation that after the abortion I will most likely be heavily emotional from female hormones and maternal instinct and him immediately responding with “ ya no I don’t wanna deal with that” hit like a shotgun to the chest.
I hate seeing my parents getting older 😭 especially since they had me later in life
Realizing my dad physically, psychologically, and emotionally abused me.
My pets not having the same lifespan as me. Currently steeling myself for my 14 year old cat getting an ultrasound because the vet suspects she has early kidney disease
How difficult it can be to get pregnant when you’re finally ready to start a family
Being alone a lot more than I thought I would. Friends come and go and it’s harder the older you get to make new ones
Feeling so alone, like I had no safety net. If I messed up, lost my job, etc, I’d be cooked.
Growing apart with a childhood best friend. That was a harsh lesson on not getting too attached to people. I mean I still get attached but I keep boundaries, like an adult should.
It is still sad to lose the pure, naive ability to love a friend with abandon.
I am 40 and still in touch with several childhood friends, we love eachother but its an adult friendship, its a bit different. As it should be. But still different.
Knowing that my parents fucked up my life and I have to spend years/rest of my life trying to recover. While also having children myself.
Realizing that not everyone you care about will stick around. Losing people or drifting apart hits different when you grow up. It’s a tough lesson that takes time to accept.
Not having friends fucking sucks dude. I suffer pretty badly from mental illness that really reared its ugly head in my 20s. I’m thirty and so fucking lonely
Deciding to hand a child only to realize in the only person in my family with fertility issues
Probably when I was 15 and was in my first relationship, and then the months after we broke up.
I had been very lonely as a kid (only child who got bullied to the point of being suicidal at 14) and I just wanted SOMEONE to love me. I got my first boyfriend the summer after 9th grade. He was great and we made out, snuggled, basically everything but penetrative sex. And he made me feel desired emotionally and physically. Then he ghosted me when school started up again, and we didn’t go to the same school so I didn’t even see him after the ghosting.
It was miserable after I had gotten a taste of what being loved like that felt like. I was even more lonely and just craving physical affection. I dated multiple losers between 10th-12th grade just to have someone. None of them were good partners I just hated being without a romantic partner. He was my sexual awakening and I was changed forever after that summer. Like I realized I wasn’t a kid or a tween anymore, I was well on my way to adulthood and the kind of physical contact and relationships that come with it.
That life isn’t fair at all.
[removed]
Realizing that I couldn’t go back. The summer before sixth grade, I started having these little mini panic attacks, or maybe just anxiety attacks, where I was terrified that I was getting close to graduating from school and having to be an adult. In my area, sixth grade is the start of middle school, and it hit me hard. I was a little afraid of being in a new building with new teachers and all that, but mainly I was so sad that I was going to have to leave my elementary school. Already I felt like life was going way too fast, and I wasn’t nearly finished being a kid yet.
The fact that growing up was not all sunshine and rainbows like I had imagined when I was a kid, reality set in.