Growin' Up
When you're a kid, the world seems huge. Backyards are like unfettered and holy meadows - waiting to be grazed within, danced through and played upon. Sandboxes are beaches of eternity.
Growing older, I've noticed that everything seems to shrink. The roads. The buildings. Sometimes even the skies look like fake blue particle board with cotton stapled on top.
I like the speedy carousel moments, where everything is a flourish of light and sight and sound and people and whimsy - but I also like the moments where the clock sticks and the inner gears seem to spite me. I become impatient. I twitch. I fiddle. But I learn. I learn to wait, and I learn to not rush ahead and to be okay with the anxious moments.
How do we ever know what love looks like? Because for one person, it can seem so right. They see something desirable in the eyes of another that makes them sick and tired and happy and hurt all over - but is it actually love when it's unreturned?
Unrequited. Unfulfilled.
I think growing up is about waiting, and understanding, and knowing that love moves far beyond a moment. It waits. It yearns. It burns. It builds. It adapts. Sometimes, it's gone. Sometimes, it comes back. But when it's the real deal, it can't be mistaken for any other plastic impostor.
