Last night, right before I went to bed and just after I punched the red button on the remote and turned the TV of, my mom hugged me, and she said “in two years you will be gone. Your brother will be gone. I had such a wonderful time raising you’ll.” Her nose got a little blotchy as did her eyes. My mom finds it easy to be sentimental and emotional. I on the other hand, don’t. Showing my sensitivity has always matched up with being vulnerable. Btu last night, when mom said those words, something inside me dropped real hard, right onto my gut. A long fall that gathered speed and weight as it fell, air whooshing up into my mouth and a vacuum like feeling growing in the pit of my stomach. It was over, the childhood. She had acknowledged it. She, the guardian of my growth, the witness to the expansion of my body, mind and soul. The giver of life. The calmer of temper tantrums. The maker of mistakes. The rectifier of accidents. Did she actually recognize the time? Suddenly my perception of time and space and all that jazz felt so completely fucked up, it was unbearable! It is finally over isn’t it? Everything I was looking forward to all my life suddenly scared me. The aloneness of life abruptly made its self very felt.

It was the age of innocence, wasn’t it? Through the corrupt mind, language, and intoxications. It was all in innocence, wasn’t it? We thought we were so cool sometimes, all the drunk nights and stoned afternoons. Thought we were street smart and mature beyond our years. Refusing to believe there was a thing we couldn’t deal with, a thing we didn’t know. The lies, the boyfriends, the shameless behaviour in public. Nothing but memories and photos now.

Its true, youth is wasted on the young. But now is now, isn’t it? Time travel stories are for the naive? Must we give in that easily to age and maturity? I suppose we must.


Yes.
I suppose we must.