When I was younger I never understood how adults were they way they are. When I was slightly stupider I thought they were smart. Then I grew up and realized I wasn’t smart back in the day.
I was still in the process of growing up when I started seeing it, but I brushed it off as me being inexperienced, not knowing enough about life. I made excuses, the way sometimes we all do. It had to stop someday though, right? It did. Exactly 5 days ago. I spent the evening at an aunt’s house, introducing a friend of their age to them. Not really a “normal” situation. All the same, that evening I saw a stark naked truth staring me in the face and it took all the self control I had to hold in my dangerously foul mouth and tear the man in question into tiny little pieces aiming at his weakest spots and force him to face his own truth. Instead, I waited till it reached boiling point, till the effort made its way up from my feet, consumed me and poured up to my head and, get this, I cried.
Laugh, I’m laughing as I read this because really who would think that such an intensely harsh contemplation would lead to tears. At least they were tears of frustration.
He was condescending, he was needling me to react, to fight back or fight for myself. I frankly don’t care which of the two it actually was. Somewhere in my head that voice whispered to me and said, “This is what he wants. Don’t give it.” It’s been whispering for a while now. “They want you to prove yourself. Repeatedly. See it.” That voice even pleaded but I didn’t pay heed until that moment when I realized that nothing would ever be enough, I would always be just a little girl. Pretending not to be one.
I was getting into the swimming pool last week, this small 11 year old girl walked out of the changing room dressed in a halter neck and tiny shorts walked up to the mirror, opened her purse and put on lipstick with utmost perfection. That night I felt like I was that small girl to them. I realized I would always be.
When we grow up, we forget what it’s like to be younger. Tough luck for the ones who are younger right? We get so tamed by our thoughts, we get so caught up in this tiny little box that we forget to look beyond. It’s an unfortunate thing that happened to this current generation of adults. No one showed them how to look beyond. That lack of teaching doesn’t even allow them to change. They think they’re mature, which with all due respect, to what they’ve been exposed to they are. But how do they see your maturity when yours goes beyond a level they can hardly begin to comprehend? You’re different, you’re better equipped, you’re lucky. I was angry that night. Today, I’m lucky. I escaped that damage. I grew up in a wider world, with endless horizons, with possibilities instead of probabilities, with profound skies and far beyond.
