`You've got some growing up to do missy mo` she said.

I have always been the type of person to feel that its uneccessary to officially `GROW UP` until your in your 30's, and I always invisioned myself being the student at university or wherever Higher Education took me who was not quite ready to grow up yet. Now, at the beginning of my teens, I seen this as a positive. Young and Naive me, thought that living life like Peter Pan was the best thing since sliced bread and Tomato Soup. Running around outside, rolling down hills even with a large doze of hayfever, knocky door ginger and water fights. You name it. I loved it. Yet now, Im at that age where all of that seems like a lifetime away, when infact it was only 5 years back that I was wishing my life would just come to a halt. My mother told me once that I had some growing up to do and that `life isnt this simple and nice all of the time` and at that age, I wasnt sure what she meant. Now, nearly 18, I understand her. Or do I just tell myself I understand her?

I understand that when getting closer to becoming an adult, life becomes progressively harder and not just because as soon as that age dawns upon us we instantly think ` wow, 18.I need to become more independant than I was yesterday when I was 17` because we dont think like that. Yet decisions become a lot harder and more frequent. Decisions of higher education,careers,moving, falling in love and getting out of difficult situations. All a sad yet such a difficult fact of life. Facts which I have faced to a small degree as a teenager, but I am yet to face as an adult.

Yet do we really need to grow up? Is there even such thing as growing up? Or is it just a hint of seriousness creeping in making us think that we have become a mature and responsible human being. A guy I know (who goes by the name of Adam Lister) once said that `life only gets shitter, because you're doing the things that, you somewhat 'need' to do rather than you 'want' to do. ` And you know what? Hes totally right. He is right because we decide for ourselves the paths we choose and so what if everyone seems to think that maturity is the form of growing up. I always think that people grow up to fast nowadays when you look around.

All I know is that I wish to be back at that innocent and decision free age of 12, where I had not a care in the world and where I was constantly covered in bruises with my favourite jeans laced in grass stains. Not just for the games or fun times but because decisions of your life didnt have to be mapped out and was just slowly flowing. Surely life can be like that, no matter what age?

I suppose this is what everyone seems to call growing up time. Yet does growing up have a specific time,era or chapter? I say growing up is open for you own interpretation in the sense that you make of it what you make of it.