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Aug. 16th, 2009 01:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinsyWe had my step-dad’s nephew, wife, and kids over today, and it was so strange because even though the task of entertaining the kids fell to me after dinner, really, I was one of the adults. I was part of the adult conversation, I understood the adult conversation, and afterward the girl was telling me all about the trials that come with being in fourth grade and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was all so simplistic, so idealistic, so entirely naïve and wrong about the way the world works: wanting to get out of school as soon as possible, and thinking growing up will solve all your problems, and being most worried about having to pay taxes of all things! And I just listened to her, and thought wasn’t that me just yesterday?, and how did this happen?
But the strangest thing was that even as I looked at her and thought, You have no idea how good you have it: enjoy it, enjoy it, enjoy it! I knew that I wouldn’t really go back to that age if I could. There is beauty in the innocence of childhood, but I’m beginning to recognize that there is also beauty in the … awareness that comes with being an adult. Understanding now what I couldn’t understand then, finally appreciating the things they told me: don’t grow up too fast, don’t crave the responsibility, live in the moment, enjoy it while it lasts. There is a beauty in wanting to go back that you could never experience if you’d stayed.
I liked being seventeen. I sort of understood all this, a little, enough, enough to feel the ache of loss that is so terrible and so beautiful, and yet the remnants of childhood still clung to me, barely, just barely, gifting me with flashes of innocent hope, letting me believe for just a little longer that things would be all right in the end.
I wonder when you stop trying to hurl yourself forward and start wanting to go back. I wonder if you grow up the day you stop wanting to grow up. Maybe Peter Pan is the most grown up of us all. He knows that one thing other children don’t, even if he doesn’t fully understand it: to grow up is the least desirable thing of all.
Only it’s not, really. The pain of childhood is simple, straightforward: it hurts, and that’s all it does, and that’s all you understand. The pain of adulthood is a complicated, twisted, terrible, beautiful ache: it’s the good kind of pain, the best kind, shattering you and piecing you back together again, and even when it hurts you know, on some fundamental level, that it’s what you need.
There’s a reason adults cry during movies, a reason kids can never understand. We cry because we must. We cry because we know now what we didn’t know, what they don’t know, what they one day will know. We cry because sometimes beauty is so painful and pain so beautiful.
I cry because my life is one twisted, awful, beautiful, terrible, gorgeous, horrific, magnificent, fucked up mess, and when my heart is torn open and my soul laid bare, I know I wouldn’t really change a thing.
But the strangest thing was that even as I looked at her and thought, You have no idea how good you have it: enjoy it, enjoy it, enjoy it! I knew that I wouldn’t really go back to that age if I could. There is beauty in the innocence of childhood, but I’m beginning to recognize that there is also beauty in the … awareness that comes with being an adult. Understanding now what I couldn’t understand then, finally appreciating the things they told me: don’t grow up too fast, don’t crave the responsibility, live in the moment, enjoy it while it lasts. There is a beauty in wanting to go back that you could never experience if you’d stayed.
I liked being seventeen. I sort of understood all this, a little, enough, enough to feel the ache of loss that is so terrible and so beautiful, and yet the remnants of childhood still clung to me, barely, just barely, gifting me with flashes of innocent hope, letting me believe for just a little longer that things would be all right in the end.
I wonder when you stop trying to hurl yourself forward and start wanting to go back. I wonder if you grow up the day you stop wanting to grow up. Maybe Peter Pan is the most grown up of us all. He knows that one thing other children don’t, even if he doesn’t fully understand it: to grow up is the least desirable thing of all.
Only it’s not, really. The pain of childhood is simple, straightforward: it hurts, and that’s all it does, and that’s all you understand. The pain of adulthood is a complicated, twisted, terrible, beautiful ache: it’s the good kind of pain, the best kind, shattering you and piecing you back together again, and even when it hurts you know, on some fundamental level, that it’s what you need.
There’s a reason adults cry during movies, a reason kids can never understand. We cry because we must. We cry because we know now what we didn’t know, what they don’t know, what they one day will know. We cry because sometimes beauty is so painful and pain so beautiful.
I cry because my life is one twisted, awful, beautiful, terrible, gorgeous, horrific, magnificent, fucked up mess, and when my heart is torn open and my soul laid bare, I know I wouldn’t really change a thing.