Time & I: An Essay

A Story by FaeryQueen

Time & I: An Essay

At birth, I took two roads; one was high and one was low. The highest part was that of a child growing into something she viewed as innocent; child-play; laughter, jokes. She interpreted the world the way she only knew how to; with colors and waterproof paint. She highlighted the things she was told were “bad” and put them all away on the highest shelf she could never reach; she asked for help. That help was me; I helped her put the bad things away by taking them into my own way of living, those bad things influenced me and the things that I did. I kept it away from her so she couldn’t say I was no help to her. She wanted me to help her; so I did. I sheltered her from what otherwise would be considered hell. I so very solemnly took an oath of secrecy from her to never speak a word of anything that was going on. I told her I wasn’t going to tell anyone what she did; what we did.

The flowers all looked so pretty. I’m running past a bushel of color and I’m not even outside; I’m reading a book and the colors in these pictures are so vibrant. These stories are so satisfactory, the main character along with everyone else, even the slightly mean ones all get a happy ending. I like the lessons I learn from some of the books I’m reading. But sometimes the character does things that are so unwise at the moment they are doing that and it seems so irrational to do that, which they do. I mean, why they would do something so dumb that jeopardizes them with everything baffles me. It doesn’t make any sense, the witch casted a curse and now somehow only a kiss can break it? What sense does that make, that witch’s’ power is stronger than anything else in that world, why would only a measly kiss break a spell casted by a sorcerer so powerful as that witch?

In that time and age, nothing seemed to make sense to me. Nothing did because logic made no sense to me back then; I never knew that you had to save the best for last, or to use things while it lasted in your possession. The very idea of prioritization seemed to intrigue me, but in the way things often do at first. I didn’t know, or rather, learn how to do that yet, I was still a baby, remarked many although I did not hear of them to say that about me. It seemed ridiculous to me to even lift a finger to say anything to anyone if they happened to not like you and they said something unpleasant to hurt you or just as a joke. It seemed otherworldly to even think about being alone in the future; the very concept of time slipped away from us; what? We thought, growing up? We said to ourselves at night, we’ll never grow up. Being young means you never have to grow old and gray; just like Peter Pan said.

The thing was we had a little too much faith in Peter. In fact, we had so much faith in Peter that the idea of time seemed irrational. The idea of time and aging and the concepts that were rather easy to others to comprehend were very difficult tasks to portray to me. I couldn’t be convinced at this time, this was a time where our childhood brains and our childhood abilities came into full effect; we were learning to finger paint; to bruise our fingers with the very imaginations’ in our souls. This made sense to us as if a certain entity took over and suddenly all we wanted to do at all time was to paint and paint and paint until our bodies reeked of the smell of toxins. We couldn’t wait to express our inner selves on the canvas’ we happen to forge; our walls, the back of our beds etc. etc.… Anywhere we could find that’s open and feels as if it should be painted on; was.

It seemed ages before I turned into 13. Before my 13^th, I never found an interesting thing about anything in the world. I was too intensely intimate with childhood. And when I had to part with that, my childhood, there seemed to be a problem; what now? Since I didn’t have my childhood to preoccupy me, what do I now preoccupy myself with? There seemed to me no problem in the grand matrix of things, well… there was, but that didn’t bother me. Although most might say this to be contradictory since it does bother me so; in the grand scale, it bothered me none. Childhood seemed to be so distant after I turned 13. Like an old friend gone away on holiday. I missed childhood oh-so much; I needed one more day where I could be little again; where I could be young again. I needed reassurance that my childhood wasn’t lost to me forever, because if it was, then I’d be confused and in a daze for the remainder of my days.

Then the intricacy of my mind began to permanently establish a home for childhood so it wouldn’t be lost to me. I began to have days where time absolutely had no meaning to me, where the sun only came up and stayed up; never going out. Those times, I’d have one eye open and one eye closed at night. I never actually believed in fairies, mermaids, magic, pixies and all those mystical mind-fantasies. Before, when I was younger, I was told they weren’t real. That they only existed in movies and books and inside the linens of some people’s minds. I was a child and the words of elders were words of gold. But I assumed everything the way they wanted me to and nothing the way I wanted to. I’d be holding pieces of logic and putting them in the wrong receptors. I made a total fool of myself going around, matter-of-factly, telling people what’s what. Then the childhood memories began to replay it back to me over and over again.

After a while, I grew faint of the idea of childhood, suddenly, I didn’t want to be reminded of my childhood anymore; I wanted to grow far apart from it as I could. Then I turned 16 and I realized what I missed. And because I missed a lot, wanting to grow far apart from childhood and all, I began to dumb myself down at times, as if my child-self didn’t really leave me; only hiding in the shadows. But that didn’t see to last long as I began to feel obsolete from everyone else around me. So I realized growing up and I acknowledged its inevitable existence. Whether I’d want to or not, I had to grow up because if I stayed a kid whilst in my growing body, I’d never learn. So with that, I accepted into the culture that is quickly growing.