ORIGIN: What can we say? Sometimes we don’t see eye to eye and our hearts aren’t in the same place. One of us wanted to smell the roses and the other wanted to scream. This was the compromise we reached.
A childhood home is where you learn to make preparations for the future. Dreams don’t take you anywhere. The only books I read under the covers with a flashlight were non-fiction. I couldn’t bring myself to trust moonlight with something as important as my one and only life because time doesn’t wait for fiction readers. I knew, even back then, that only rocket science would take me to the stars.
A childhood home is where you learn to love. Sure, I would have preferred to be hugged to within an inch of my life, but I was a child, not a stuffed animal. I was a bundle of energy because someone else put food on the table every day. Most nights they were dead on their feet, and it didn’t take me long to realize that I was knee-high. The perfect size. To hug them and keep them upright.
A childhood home is where you learn to protect yourself. I will never forget the first pillow fort I built. Half a dozen toy soldiers at the gates and tv static creeping, like poison ivy, into every nook and cranny. I learned then and there that bubbles don’t exist. I abandoned any notion of shutting myself in because I felt that investing my time in thickening my skin would be a better use of my childhood.
A childhood home is where you eat comfort food. Something sweet, still warm, that lets you know that you are worth someone’s time. More than the 5 minutes it would take to fill an online shopping cart to the brim and have a month’s worth of frozen meals home delivered.
What ever happened to your home? Your teeth have never looked sharper. Did you wolf it down? I see. A home is where you ready yourself for the outside world, but you refuse to grow up, with all the determination of a black hole. Well, at least you are passionate about something.
I want to live with my head in the clouds, not with both feet on the ground. Have you ever heard of the refraction of light? When happiness travels from dreams into reality, it gets distorted. I don’t want to go about my life splashing in mud puddles. I want to drink happiness directly from the clouds. With nothing weighing me down.
Can you believe it? They tried to tell me how to live my life, when everybody knows that that’s what school is for. I tore off all their pages, of course. They didn’t mesh well with the fairytale I was told to write.
My parents tried their best, it’s not their fault that the angel on my shoulder couldn’t put on enough weight to win the fight for my heart. Who knows, maybe the opposite is true. My parents tried to raise a hero. Someone who would put others first. A self-sacrificing child willing to share his umbrella and get soaked to the bone. Maybe all that rain robbed my angel of its ability to fly. Maybe my angel lost its balance and fell, leaving me with the devil on my other shoulder and the lightest of hearts.
I have no use for the future. Plans. Dreams. Why bother? Catching up with a stranger when you were expecting a familiar face only leaves an aftertaste of disappointment. I would rather live in the moment and keep my eyes from straying.
Where did your teeth go? Disillusion is written all over your face. Such a childish word, but you are a grown-up now, aren’t you? Look on the bright sight, you still have a home. Why don’t you take each day as it comes?
Children live to appease their heart. They feed hopes and dreams to a volcano in order to stave off the eruption. Because children instinctively know what will happen to them if they don’t. Buried in the ashes and the debris of their happiness, children grow up. And then they just live to fill their stomach. There’s nothing to worry about. It’s alright. I’m about to make peace with that reality.
30 minutes. That’s the goal. The bare minimum. I miss being a child. Dreaming about what lies beyond the horizon. Catching my breath. With my heart still beating a mile a minute in my ribcage. Trying to peek beyond a dozen white horizons at once.
I miss being a child. The willingness to try. The magic that makes them flock to a playground, like iron shavings to a magnet, and become fast friends. Grown-ups don’t have that. They don’t even try. Why would they? When they can just go into a pet shop and come out with the safest companionship there is.
Apparently, recognition is a fundamental human need. When I was a child, I liked my father’s voice. It was warm. He always kept his promises and only gave praise where praise was due. Pieces of paper are lukewarm at best, and I don’t see the point of participation trophies. I would still be me without the former, and the latter would have never been a lifeline, on the contrary, it would have made me feel like giving up the ghost. I needed my father’s recognition because I was a child and he was there to guide me. But I am already fully formed. I have outgrown that need. But to each their own.