Growing Pains

I was a child when we met, but now I am older.
You are still children, and I'm sorry for that, but I have changed.
You drag me down, demanding and competing and whispering; like skeletal hands pulling me back into the grave.
I answer to no one, to myself perhaps, certainly not to you.
I find my own way, and it does not belong to you, and you do not belong here.
Along the way, somewhere, our paths split apart and now you're blaming me for leaving.
You kicked me out, abandoned me, and then questioned why I left.

It's different now, with different people.  Not with you at all.
They listen, understand, and care.  But nothing I do invalidates them.
We are allowed, you see, to succeed together without one taking away from the other.
This is real, this is age, this is growing.
And I like it so much better here than where I began.
It hurts to grow like this; to become a different sort of person than who I was before, but it's pain that indicates a better future.
Stagnation is death in this life, and at last, I am growing while leaving you behind.