Growing up or giving up?

I always thought life was not just a mere journey but an adventure. The least you could do to keep up with it was take risks. I was a firm believer of living each day as it comes. Life was never too planned out, never too calculated. I was impulsive and reckless and that seemed to work for me. Indulging in random acts of craziness just to make life more colorful, actions before thoughts and decisions before speculations- life was simple, easy. Times change, we change. We grow up. Life isn't all that easy anymore. Everything seems to have a purpose. No more impulsive actions, no more miscalculated decisions. We grow up to learn that everything should be thought about and the risks weighed. Everyone around you judges you by your actions, everyone wants to pull you down. So what do you do? Pull them down too. Gone are the days when you couldn't care less about the rest. Now all your actions are based on what they expect out of you. The child in you dies slowly and you do nothing to save it. After all, you have to grow up. What we forget is that with that inner child, we let a part of our soul die too. The energy which used to drive us, the faith that used to keep us from falling and the hope of rising again after a fall, all die slowly. We poison our brains with the venom of sensibility. Not everything has to make sense, but we often seem to forget that. I cried before my eighteenth birthday because I was upset I had to grow up. Everyone told me "its just a number". We all know it is not. I despise having to be responsible. I hate the fact that I have to make my own decisions and there seems no one who's got my back. Yes, I hate being a grown up. The unnecessary worry of the future and of things I shouldn't even care about gets to me. I regret letting it go, and I wish it would come back. That very part of me which made me the person I was.