Chapter 1
Soda turns to vodka. Bikes turn to cars. Kisses turns to more. Remember when getting high meant swinging at the playground? When protection meant wearing a helmet? When the worst thing you can get from a boy/girl was cooties? Do you remember when dad’s shoulders were the highest thing on earth and mum was your hero?
Your worst enemies were your siblings. When race issues were about who could run the fastest. War was only a card game and the only drug you knew was cough medicine. When wearing a skirt didn’t make you a slut. The most pain you felt was when you scrapped your knee. Were goodbyes only meant till tomorrow? And you wanted to grow up.
Why did you want to grow up? Did you want the taste of soda to leave? Were bikes not enough? Was a peck on a cheek to small of affection for you? Did you not like the playground with the wind in your face? Was the helmet hurting you? The cooties got old, right? Where dads’ shoulders not high enough
for you anymore and did your mum get replaced with some common trash you found online?
Do you like your siblings now that you found out that your parents don’t have a favourite? That race didn’t mean what you thought it meant. Now you know war can happen anywhere. You found a knew meaning of drug. You can no longer wear a skirt without being uncomfortable. The pain you feel comes from heartache and betrayal. That goodbye can mean forever. But you wanted that, didn’t you?
You wanted to feel the pain of losing someone important to you, right? I remember when you said growing would solve anything, did it? Or did it replace the other problems with ones much greater ones? Like how you felt scared of being alone, so you made friends every were you went or how you talked to people you knew were sad so they don’t try to hurt them self.
I remember how you said you wanted to become a chef but the first time you cooked spaghetti with chicken they called it bland and tasteless. So, you decided to become a writer and you started to write a book called ‘growing up’, they said you couldn’t make it work but you wouldn’t listen because you loved writing and then you started to get interested in becoming a neuro brain surgeon. And you studied and studied, even watched grey’s anatomy all 16 seasons that were out, but they said you could never make it because you weren’t smart enough.
You paid them no attention because you knew you could amount to anything you put your mind to, even if you were only 16 years old. Do you remember when you tried to ride your first bike? you kept falling and falling even when people told you to give up. you kept persisting and persisting and you learnt to ride a bike. That shows you can do anything even when the only person that believes is you.
Do you still think growing up was a good thing? I think you do, don’t you? Well you did meet your first love, Sara. But she did end up not talking to you once she found out you liked woman. That’s heartache and it always ends up leaving, and it left for good that time.
Do you remember the first time you felt sad? When you found out love doesn’t happen for everyone, and it never happened to you again till you met Marie and loved her for a year and a half but you found out that she had no feelings, you just couldn’t stop the heartbreak.
Remember the first time you felt okay? When you finally got out of bed in the morning without dread and thought it was a good day. When you didn’t need to remember to smile. When the colours seemed brighter than ever. You didn’t feel the tight pain in your chest and you could breathe again.
hope you liked it xxx
~hannah
