Growing Pains

Yesterday was

the same as today but somehow everything is different, things and people have grown – outwards and backwards and upside down rather than upwards. Everything is a diluted or concentrated version of what it was a year ago, every day is a diluted or concentrated version of the same day in a different year. Everything turned up or turned down, gradually and incrementally till it’s barely reminiscent of the original, warped beyond recognition by time and perspective.

Today has been the same as yesterday but the people who used to be older are now just old. I’m no longer allowed to be the youngest and have to settle for being young. I’m older than I was last year but I’m no more grown up, I care about things less and others more but my brain is still full of the same thoughts. I think I’m more rational, happier but maybe I’m just more reflective and accepting. 

I’m not a grown up but I’m also not a child.

I thought I wanted to be a child, to be uninhibited and careless but children have limitations and rules that seem far more frustrating than the rules of adulthood. 

I used to associate childhood with freedom but it’s a false freedom, it seems free because you don’t know any better, you have no responsibilities but no horizons.

I want the freedom of being an adult with the chaos of being a child, the small freedoms of adulthood with the irresponsibility of being a child. 

Children are chaos in a restricted vessel, I want the chaos of childhood in a sterile body.

I don’t know what I want. 

I’m not afraid of being old but I’m afraid of getting old. Of knowing more but doing less, stuck in a body that can’t keep up with my mind. Everything is moving too fast but I don’t feel like I’m moving at all.