Childhood
We are the children of memory, which seems so unreal now, when childhood a distant dream. It’s hard to imagine you once were young, it’s hard to grasp all the ways your subconscious has endured. If you dig back hard enough, you can feel a child’s thought and the faint remnants with which it bore itself so deeply into you. You remember seeing the world through those eyes, knowing now you will never be a child again. That experience has shaped you, those eyes still your lenses, your vessels for these ongoing semblances of human understanding.
It would be impossible not to miss yourself, to supplant your disillusioned self into that former state of innocence. We were young and the world was small. The world is so much bigger now. Your actions have repercussions. What you put into the world returns to you and what you take now leaves a mountainous void.
Extracting contentment from that darkness holds you forever in its obligation, days you owe to a child who hasn’t yet started keeping tally. And so today is your atonement. You owe this to yourself—for as you grow in time, old clothes and thoughts get put away. Your memories are the stitches that define you, to be kept in drawers for when you need to remember who you’ve been.
Childhood is a memory to help you remember who you are and all the dreams you’ve yet to make.
