Just thinking

I inhale, the cold night air chilling my lungs as I gaze from my window. I wonder where this tidal wave of black came from. I find no answers in the still night, watching the rain as it continues its relentless assault on the ground, tiny droplets falling on the hard earth, looking like small falling stars as they catch the light from the street lamps.

I turn from the window, pulling it closed behind me as I return to my desk and the suffocating silence of my room. I glance around, my eyes finally resting on the shelf above my desk. Filled with trinkets and photographs, a reminder of days gone past, a collection of memories. Each photograph a snap shot of a moment. No explanations, just single moments in time, frozen forever. an assortment of toys, bracelets and a tiny treasure chest filled with marbles from my childhood sit alongside. I turn and further investigate the contents of my room. What would this room say about me to a stranger? That I'm short of space? That I'm holding onto my youth with a desperate hand and a sinking sense of loss? Both of these things would be equally true.

When do we become adults? When is it that we finally lose the innocence and joyful ignorance that we carry as a child? When do we become that which we swear in our youth that we will never be? I don't know the answers to these questions, I only know that time eventually claims us and strips away our childhood innocence, leaving us naked and without defence to find our way in the big wide world as a grown up. We build our lives based on all that has befallen us and we stumble blindly through this maze we call life. Making plans that never happen; all kiss sore lips and mascara tears. Broken homes, empty hearts and missing families, green disease and the disappointing assurance that this is the way of the world.

Remembering the things I believed in during the hazy days of summer in the garden of my youth, I wonder if there is a place in the world for such dreams anymore. Something tells me there isn't. We move from childhood dreams into the excesses and expectations of adulthood, never realizing the value of what we leave behind. Demands and the pressure to have it all fall constantly on our shoulders and I wonder if one day anyone but me will realise that it's okay not to have everything and that having enough is worth much more.