I finally realized why it is that I’ve hated growing up so much. It’s not about the goodbye’s or the puberty or the first heartbreak and all. It’s about realizing what kind of world we live in. 

 

As we grow up, we learn about bigotry and feminism and misogyny and homophobia and all the fucked up discrimination that goes on in the world. We start recognizing it in our everyday lives. In people that we love and care for. People that we admire.

 

As we grow up, we see how women are treated as objects of sexual arousal and nothing else. How little girls are overtly sexualized in the name of dress up and ‘children having fun’ even though it’s really just a means of self pleasure for pedophiles. 

 

We learn about how people were horribly mistreated or killed just for being of a certain race or colour or following a particular religion and seeing it continue till today, many years later. We see people getting barred from air planes just because some people of the same ethnicity committed horrendous acts of terrorism and we watch, horrified, as society accepts it.

 

We see how men and every aspect of the male gender is glorified. How society is ruled by males no matter how much it tries to deny it. How it is natural for men to only care about sex but ‘slutty’ for women to do the same. How men expressing feelings is considered a positive trait but a woman showing a sliver of human emotion is deemed ‘hysterical’ and ‘over dramatic’.

 

We try to comprehend why loving someone of the same gender is deemed ‘immoral’ or even worse ‘a phase’. Why two men or two women can’t love each other with the same intensity and passion that a man and a woman do without being called names; horrendous, incomprehensible names. Why two lovers can’t have their dream wedding but instead have to do with a trip to a very unromantic room and signing some legal papers, just because they’re of the same sex.

 

You see, as a kid, we are raised to believe that our world is a wonderful place. A place where people dream. A place where dreams come true. A place where you can be anything you want to be, do anything you want to do.

But, as we grow up, we see our world the way it is. A horrible, misogynistic, homophobic and racist world. A world that is a born bigot in every single way possible. We see that and it shatters us. It…it destroys us. Why? Because we don’t want to live in this kind of world. I mean, how could we?

 

Our world is a terrible place to live in and our society as a whole realizes that and accepts that without so much as a gasp or a moment of hesitation. We live in a disgusting world and we know it. We as a people, accept it wholeheartedly.

 

And whenever somebody wishes for a different kind of world, in this case me, they are laughed at. They’re called naive or foolish. How screwed up is that?

 

Doesn’t that sadden you? Like is it really that foolish to ask for a better world to live in? I’m not asking for Utopia or perfection. Perfection shall never be achieved and I know it. I’m just asking for my world, my home, my fucking country to be a little less sexist, a little less homophobic, a little less of a bigot. Is that so unattainable? I mean, for every person that stands up and asks for a better world for them to live in, a thousand laugh.

 

Because the very idea of a better world is laughable. Unimaginable. Do you know how helpless that makes me feel? How sad and pathetic that makes me feel?

 

I am 16 years old. 16. 16 years and I’ve already given up on this world. What will 16 more do? Heck, what will the rest of my frigging life do?

 

I don’t hate growing up because I have to say goodbye to people. I don’t hate it because of my first heartbreak that is still to come. I hate it because my world is disintegrating right in front of me into this big pile of shit, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

 

And society accepts it.