You turn 18 and life doesn’t have rules anymore. Home isn’t home it’s just another building you fill your time with. Sleep is either an escape or a prison. I’m lawless now and I’ve never wanted to be controlled any more.
How I long to be 6 again and the worst thing is being forced to go to bed at a decent hour. I wish I could tell my younger self, with every hour you see on the clock you meet a new version of yourself. It isn’t as pretty and gracious at you hope, rather it’s full of fear and self doubt. No matter where I run I will always remember my past.
My memories will haunt me like a lovelorn ghost and I can try and try but I cannot forgot the dreams I had at 9. Her dreams will stalk me and pierce my mind nightly when I finally begin to have rest.
I will be plagued with the knowledge that at 11 I dreamed all these dreams and I have come to fulfill none of them. That I am a complete failure to my childhood self and she is none the wiser to the future she must suffer through or the person she will inevitably become. I must watch as she is put through the same mistakes I made while I am silenced from making a change. I cannot escape her, she follows me with her naïve dreams of simplicity while I am chained to the curse of reality.
I am forced to know every detail of my friends when all I used to care about was if they were free on Friday mornings. Now I know every sin, every wrong they have made and worse more is that they analyze every flaw I ever dreamt of having.
I am buried with the wishes of my 15 year old self who only ever dreamed for someone to love her. She begged the skies and prayed every second of every day for someone to see her, to know her, to want her. But she was only met with horrid people who wished her harm and were the catalysts that brought upon her ruin.
But I must sit back and watch this happen, I am no longer in control. I cannot interfere with this cruel world’s rules. It plays a far greater game than I and I haven’t a guidebook to this mess.
I know one day I will look back on my days of 17 with a grief filled fondness and wish I could have been wiser, stronger, more bold and less cautious.
But for right now I am horrifically 18. With a wry laugh I whisper to myself “I’m an adult” I wished my life away. I no longer can afford to dream like little girls dream, of fairies and mythical creatures who may save me from this wretched world. But I must dream of bigger things. Careers and colleges and lifelong goals. Oh how I wish I could go back to those days. Do it over. Do it right. Just please, do it all again. But alas, my alarm is going off and it’s time to get ready for work.
*I put down my phone and start mindlessly preparing for another day in adult world, slipping soundlessly into insanity as I wait for someone to save me*
“The torture of aging” (sentences highlighted in red for emphasis)
