I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it actually means to grow up too soon. Not in a dramatic way but more in a slow, quiet, unnoticed way where your childhood slips through the cracks without you realising until years later. The kind where everyone else around you got to be clueless for longer, while you were sat there absorbing things you didn’t have the age or context to make sense of yet. It’s strange how early maturity doesn’t show itself at the time; it only reveals itself when you’re older, looking back, piecing together why you’ve always felt just slightly out of sync with everyone else.

I wasn’t sheltered. I wasn’t shooed out of the room when the grown-ups talked. I got the “come sit down, you might as well hear this too” version of childhood. Honesty was the rule, not protection, and I don’t resent that – to be honest, a twisted part of me loved it. I liked being involved, knowing things, feeling older than my age. There’s something intoxicating about being treated like you’re capable before you’ve even hit double digits. You feel important. You feel mature. You feel closer to the adults than kids your age who were still emotionally falling apart over who got the pink highlighter in a four-pack.

But growing up early doesn’t stay in childhood. It doesn’t evaporate when your age finally catches up with your responsibilities. It sticks. It grows legs. It moulds your personality, the way you read people, the way you carry yourself, the way you approach every relationship in your life. It becomes this subtle, quiet part of you – not loud enough to be seen by everyone else, but loud enough to shape how you see the world.

The weirdest part is realising how much it separates you from people your age. I’ve always struggled to relate to my past friendships. I don’t say that in a snobby way, I genuinely mean we’re just wired differently. They’re fuelled by spontaneity and chaos and petty arguments and whatever this week’s TikTok trend is. They love the thrill of small drama, the pettiness of something meaningless to analyse, the high stakes of groupchat fallouts that magically fix themselves by the next weekend.

And I’m just sat there like…”okay, but why?”

It’s not that I don’t care about people. I care deeply, almost too deeply sometimes. But I care in a different way. I’m thinking long-term emotional impacts. I’m thinking will this matter in two weeks. I’m thinking about if we’ve all eaten today. People my age will be arguing about something trivial and my brain has already mentally clocked out and gone to bed.

Growing up fast gives you this sense of being older than your own timeline. Like I’m 22, but mentally I’ve lived through multiple seasons of character development.

Your peers are figuring out basic emotional skills you learnt years ago by accident. They’re shocked by things you’ve already processed ten times over. They’re confused by feelings you’ve already lived through. It makes you compassionate, but it also makes you tired because you’re constantly navigating interactions with a maturity level that doesn’t match the room.

I’ve outgrown friendships at a speed that scares me sometimes. People I felt close to suddenly feel like strangers when I realise I’m at a stage they haven’t even thought about yet. That’s no one’s fault, it’s just the natural outcome of entering adulthood with a ten-year head start in emotional understanding. And the more it happens, the more I feel like I’m drifting into a separate lane from most people my age. Not intentionally, not bitterly, just naturally.

I often feel too old for rooms full of people my age, but too young for rooms full of people whose maturity matches mine.

Stuck in the in-between.

Close to everyone.

But not fully aligned with anyone.

And this is where the psychology nerd in me appears, because the more I learn about family trauma and childhood roles the more things quietly click into place. I’m not sitting here diagnosing myself or claiming I know everything, because trust me I don’t, but it’s interesting how many concepts line up with my own life without me even trying to find the link.

There’s this idea of ‘role reversal’ or ‘parentification’, where a child becomes emotionally or mentally older than their age because they’re given responsibility too soon. It’s not always extreme. Sometimes it just looks like a child being included in adult conversations. Or being the emotional one in the family. Or being the voice of reason at an age where you should be arguing about what colour your bedroom walls should be.

No one has to do anything wrong for this to happen.

No one has to be a villain.

No one has to be neglectful.

Sometimes it’s just how a family operates: open, honest, close-knit, transparent.

But even with the best intentions in the world, kids still absorb things at full force. And when you absorb too much too early, you become emotionally mature before you’ve had the chance to be emotionally carefree.

That’s how it was for me.

And I want to be crystal clear about the fact that I do not blame my family. Not even a tiny bit.

I actually love that I was raised in a house where things weren’t hidden from me. I loved being trusted. I loved being included. I loved the closeness of it. My family didn’t coddle me or sugar coat life, and that honesty shaped some of the best parts of who I am now. I would’ve hated to be lied to ‘for my own good’. I don’t want a different upbringing. I don’t even want a softer one.

But even the best intentions shape us in ways that rippled outward into adulthood.

Sometimes I look at people my age who still have that effortless lightness, the kind that comes from not having to grow up before they needed to, and I wonder what version of me would exist if I’d had that too. Would I be a little less guarded? A little more carefree? Would I find it easier to have friends who match my age instead of my mindset? Would I enjoy the silly things instead of analysing them? Would I still be trying to shrink myself to make sure I’m not ‘too much’ for people who haven’t learnt how to handle realness yet?

There’s no jealousy there. No regret. Just curiosity.

Growing up early gave me depth and awareness and empathy, but it also gave me detachment and exhaustion and emotional independence I never asked for. It made me the listener in every group, the stable one, the adviser, the deep thinker. And sometimes I want to know what it feels like to be the clueless one instead. The carefree one. The one who’s allowed to make stupid decisions because their brain hasn’t been trained to think ten steps ahead yet.

Sometimes I want to now what it feels like to be twenty-two and actually feel twenty-two.

I don’t wish my childhood was different.

Honestly, I don’t.

I just sometimes wish it lasted a little longer.

— Lilly x