The Truth About Growing Up

Born in the heat, but moved to lonely roads and the company of trees,
Toddle, tidder, fall but always learn to stand,
Love the rain, soggy socks and cold sand,
Eat sour grapes from the vine, crawl underneath, crawl on top and play make believe,
Hunt bigfoot, never trust reality,
Call for mommy, swing on the yellow swing,
Climb the trees, feel the sticky sap on my hands, and the dirt in the cut on my knee,
Catch the flying bugs and feed them to the spider friends who live on the bricks of the chimney,
Chase the shadows that were always the enemy, in that land, a stick was a sword.

Growing up is what I called it,
And with it I discovered they fix concrete with rubber,
Cry over little things, oh the drama, keep believing, pine my little heart out,
Real problems were only coming,
Summon something else in me, something tricky,
Don’t know exactly when I was mean, don’t know when I became me,
Not yet though, I just wasn’t ready, so keep pretending, keep playing, keep dreaming,
Be teased, it won’t hurt you when they find out you’re right, don’t you see?
But at the same time I noticed the trash in the streets,
Still I let fantasy become reality.

When it happened I couldn’t hide behind fake things,
It was reality, running at me, shaking me hard, it was harsh,
We were too young, it was unfair to hold us there
when we could have still be holding swords,
Cry my little heart out, for trouble this time true,
I knew I’d never go back to a time when imagined things could save me,
I often wished I could go back, to that place of squishy socks and sticky hands,
To find the girl who lived there, the perfect child, in a perfect fantasy.

When I did go back there was no little girl,
There was just an empty rope where once swung a yellow swing,
Sticks were only sticks,
And the spiders by the chimney didn’t remember me,
I went back hoping to find me, instead I found reality.
The grape vine and the trees where now tales of misery,
The empty remnants of a child's dream.

The harsh sting turned into an embrace, too hard at first, but then releasing,
We could always pretend, we could always dream,
But reality is still the only thing to believe,
I had to grow up, but you don’t know what that means,
I had to stop seeing bigfoot behind every tree,
Until you’ve done it you don’t know what it means,
I had to let the shadows remind me,
I would always miss the yellow swing,
But we all grow up differently,
Growing up means I’m not who I used to be,
Growing up means I became a person I never meant to be,
Growing up means I slowly became me.