All Grown Up

I feel I've lost a lot of time. Do you ever think back to those things you felt when you were younger?

All those dreams, left unrealised? You know, the ones we had as children, that we told our year 1 teacher about; when she nodded, and smiled, and left you with crayons and contentment, allowing those fragile dreams to remain intact for a little while longer.

I wanted to be a trapeze acrobat in a circus. I would swing back and forth in my garden, eyes burning with the images of cheering crowds and ears buzzing with their applause. I read books of girls running away to join the circus, dreamed I'd be beautiful and tall and graceful, that I'd fly through the air and that nothing else would matter.

Yet here I am, left in the tangled ruins of a hangover and regret. Spliffs smoked and guys fucked and shots downed that shouldn't have happened. How did I get like this?

Where is the little girl I once was, soaring through the air on my imaginary trapeze as my pigtails bobbed cheerily in the sunshine? Gone?

Yet sometimes, I feel her still here somewhere. When I'm scared, when I'm alone, I sometimes allow myself to return to that place. To curl up tight on my bedroom floor, squeezing out the world with tear-stained eyelids, and I remember. I feel the sting of grazed knees and kisses of parents, I taste the melting ice-creams and delicious fudge, I hear the singing of happy birthday and my own childish laughter.

Funny, isn't it, how we spend so long wishing we were grown, and yet once we get there, we'd give anything to see the world just once through innocent eyes?