Thoughts on Adulthood

It’s been a long time since I went to the playground. A long time ago, I could recall in an instant the feeling of air blowing my hair across my face as I sped down a slide; I knew what the fake sand in the sandbox, almost like dirt, felt like when I rolled it between my fingers. I could take a handful of the sand and it would stick together, then crumble, and I would lift my hand to my face and imagine that the musty smell was from the ocean. What was familiar to me sitting in Central Park at the age of four seems foreign to me now.

I am only just 17 and childhood seems like such a distant memory, a moment in my mind. When I fall, there is no soft black rubber on the ground to keep my knees from getting skinned. When it is hot outside, there are no sprinklers for me to dance through and soak my clothing in. How could I not want to go back to when those things weren’t true?

Childhood was so innocent and joyful. Adulthood, or at least being a teenager, is so different. As a kid I could do whatever I felt like – skip from one side of New York City to the other – and nobody would give me a second glance. I can only imagine the looks I would get now, skipping through Times Square by myself. Those looks would be humiliating. Since when did I become so self-conscious?

If only I were more like I was long ago. If only I could play with Ninja Turtles for eight hours and not feel silly about it; if only I could get up in the morning and not care about how I look; if only I could skip those 11 miles up and down Manhattan. Life would be so much different if I acted how I felt.

I live up to that occasionally. A month ago, I went up to the top of a hill by myself and lay down in the grass to watch the stars. I stared up into the sky and I knew why those stars were there, and as a shooting star shot by and disappeared I knew that it had burned into a million little pieces. I knew so many things and had so many thoughts in my mind. But I lay and lay and I closed my eyes and eventually, I stopped thinking. In that moment, I opened my eyes and looked back up at the sky. It was completely different. With everything so big around me and the wind blowing across my face, I felt like I was floating. Moonlight streaked across my face. In that moment, I knew what I wanted for myself. I knew what made me happy. In that moment, I could have fallen and skinned my knees, and I wouldn’t have cared.