Growing pains

When I was in sixth grade, I would wake up in the middle of the night crying because my calves ached so badly. My mom would run to my bedside, and massage my legs til I fell asleep again. I couldn't run as fast as I used to at summer camp because my muscles would twitch and throb. When I finally went to a doctor, we figured out it was simply growing pains. According to kidshealth.org:

"Although growing pains often point to no serious illness, they can be upsetting to a child - or a parent... Support and reassurance that growing pains will pass as children grow up can help them relax."

Though I no longer get throbbing pains in my legs, I still experience growing pains that are both upsetting to me and my parents, just as the pains were 14 years ago. Though I am definitely my parents' child, I'm also a product of society, my political and religious beliefs, my friends and most significantly, my own life experiences.

Sometimes I make decisions that aren't in line with the life my parents would have chosen me to lead. It's not because I don't love them or respect who they have shaped me into being. It just means I have experienced life in a different way. One that includes text messaging, inevitable financial debt, a world where traditional dinner-and-a-movie dating no longer exists, the expectations of being a strong, independent woman while still being gentle, caring and motherly.

It doesn't change who I am at the core. Rather, it shows my intensity, ability to love with great depth, confidence in my future and logical approach to life.

And what I ask from then is simply the freedom to be myself, to make the decisions - good or bad - that we all desire to make for ourselves and the understanding that it's nothing personal, but truly the act of being me.