THE WEIGHT OF GROWING UP

Growing up is a slow, relentless weight pressing down on young shoulders, a quiet force that molds a child into something more—sometimes stronger, sometimes colder, but never untouched, never unchanged. It is in these years, in the silent battles fought behind closed doors, in the moments of loneliness and realization, in the expectations placed upon them or the burdens they are forced to carry, that a boy becomes something else, something shaped by the hands of time and circumstance, something neither fully child nor fully man, something caught in the inescapable tide of responsibility.

In a world where wealth dictated time, where money could bend the very structure of existence, the boy who lived among marble floors and gilded halls found himself growing not into a person, but into a symbol, an heir to a throne built on decades of power, a future decided before he even understood what it meant to choose. His days blurred into schedules crafted by hands other than his own—mornings of academic study, afternoons of private instruction in business, evenings filled with dinners where he was expected to sit quietly, listening as men twice his age discussed stocks, politics, expansion, all while pretending he was one of them, all while absorbing the unspoken lesson that life was not about what he wanted but about what he must become. There was no room for rebellion, no space for dreams that did not align with the path laid before him, for his father's name carried a weight heavier than any desire he might have held in his own heart. And so, with every passing year, he became exactly what was expected—polished, controlled, a young man whose presence commanded respect even as his soul slowly suffocated beneath the pressure of being perfect.

But elsewhere, in the streets that did not care for expectations or titles, where survival was its own kind of education, another boy was growing up, shaped not by privilege but by necessity, by the sharp edges of hunger and the constant, gnawing reality of struggle. He had no tutors, no structured lessons to prepare him for the future—only life itself, and life was an unforgiving teacher. He learned to navigate a world where kindness was rare and opportunity even rarer, where every coin mattered and every mistake could cost more than just a reprimand, where his mother's tired eyes reminded him daily that he was not just a boy but a provider, a pillar of strength in a home where weakness was a luxury they could not afford. He took odd jobs before he was even old enough to understand why work was a necessity, learned the art of negotiation not in boardrooms but in bargaining for scraps at the market, discovered that intelligence was not just about what you knew but about how well you could read people, how well you could anticipate the unspoken rules of a world that had never been kind to those who had nothing. And though he longed for more, for something beyond the endless cycle of struggle, there was no time for dreams, no space for ambition beyond making it through another day, because for those born into hardship, growing up was not about becoming—it was about surviving.

Two boys, shaped by different forces, growing up in different worlds, walking separate paths that would never cross, never touch—until fate, in its silent and merciless way, decided otherwise.

But that time had not yet come.

For now, they simply carried the weight of growing up.