Losing My Innocence

Right now, somewhere in time, I am eight years old.

I am in the front yard of my childhood home, lying on the grass, trying to find images in the clouds.

Nothing bad has happened to me.

I remember the day it happened. I was 11 years old. There was no big catalyst, nothing extraordinary happened. I just looked around and nothing felt the same as it had the second before, the minute before, the day before. All of a sudden, the world no longer looked like a playground to me.

I had started paying attention to the world, and the world had stopped paying attention to me.

Maybe it was the other way around.

I was a girl who had just become a second too old for the world to care any longer. I had to pay attention as a defense mechanism.

That was the end of my innocence and the beginning of my loneliness.

For a long time I was grieving who I used to be. I searched for her in the mirror, thinking if I stared long enough she would come back and I could be blissfully unaware again. I wasn't the only one grieving. My parents had lost her too, and I wasn't doing anything to lighten the blow either.

My mom wanted me to be the ten year old version of myself again. I resented her for it at the time, but now I understand that she just missed seeing me happy and loving. It hurt her to see me hurting for the first time, and all parents wish for their kids to stay kids as long as possible. I was awful to her, and that may be my only regret in this life. I was only projecting, I wanted me to be ten again too. It was the first time I realized that someone can unwaveringly, unconditionally, jump-in-front-of-a-bus kind of love you and not like you at the same time.

I thought critically about everything. Especially people. Most of all, myself. I could no longer connect with people my age. I couldn't force myself to relate to them, or to laugh at their jokes, and I was over-analyzing every human interaction. Everyone liked me, but I had a hard time attaching to anyone. I was jealous of people who could smile and mean it, people who could look up to the sky and see god in the clouds. I stopped liking myself. I stopped eating. I changed my hair five times. I was so resentful at the world for stealing my innocence so young, and I wondered what I did to deserve it.

So I spent most of my time alone in my room.

I listened to music alone,

I wrote poems alone,

I drew sketches alone,

I cried alone,

I danced alone,

I read books alone.

Loneliness began to be a comfortable feeling. I felt held, alone in my room with my music and my art. And the more time I spent by myself, the more I began to enjoy my own company. So I learned as much as I could about myself, and waited for everyone else to catch up.