drabbles

on growing

i think i hated growing up when i was a kid.

every few months, we would take our height and weight. i distinctly remember giggling voices and the tapping of excited feet as us, so young and just so kid-like, ran to our friends and gushed about the 1 centimeter we managed to add to our impossibly tiny heights.

beneath all the teasing taunts and lighthearted jokes tossed around like a flimsy flag in a hurricane, there was a hidden, silent whisper of why do you want to grow tall? why do you fear the present so? why do you want time to sprint past, to slip past our stubby fingers like sand?

i wanted to be small forever. i wanted to still be able to squeeze my tiny, unbalanced body into the smallest crooks and corners with a book and a light. i wanted to believe i could hide forever in my little cubby-hole until the universe imploded in a flash of stardust and fire.

i hated time, sometimes. i hated watching precious, cherished moments slip away, hated hearing the laughter that lifted me like a pair of warm hands end after the joke was over, abhorred ending conversations that lit crackling flames in my heart, and absolutely despised watching close friends who showed me the beauty of the world from our tiny little bubbles drift away.

i wanted that singular moment to last forever, imagined freezing time to capture a snapshot of that—that singular beautiful second where everyone was laughing so hard their stomachs hurt, where i was just there, with the people i loved, existing. where we just were, for that one flash, soaked in the high of our dumb happiness, and absolutely losing it over a stupid joke.

i was the type of kid who was completely obsessed, head-over-heels style, in fiction. every year, i would have my precious book snatched up during lessons by disapproving teachers, their exasperation twisting their mouths into tired lines and always watching me with that tense disappointment.

i would read my favourite line over and over, chasing that flash of delight, that delicious high as if i had been crafted meticulously just to read this specific page and feel that wonderful, floaty feeling down to the exact second.

i get strangely attached to fake worlds, to fictional characters, to made-up stories and stay up hours into the night to weave myself similar tales of adventure and adrenaline, stars in my eyes as i whispered myself to sleep.

i listen to that one song over and over, catching that singular second where the instruments and vocals intersect and knit together just right to send my heart into a flurry. i fill my playlist with songs that are oh-so-familiar, listening to them with shivering joy until my ears hurt from wearing my earphones so often.

i can't find the words to describe it. i am a dragon protecting my hoard of shimmering shards of starlight, a kid trapping fireflies in a jar until my eyes ache from the moonlight they ooze, a rodent squirreling away my nuts for the winter until i can't remember where a single one was hidden.

my bookshelf at home is bursting with books like jars of warm honey filled with a giddy warmth that settles softly in the pit of my stomach, my playlist filled to the brim with songs that make me want to run past empty fields and scream my thoughts from rooftops, even my writing choke full of pristine words like the soft shine of pearls nestled in oyster shells shielding them from the outside world.

i want all these pieces of golden joy to remain frozen in time, to be a home i can return to when the world seems bleak and dark.

but yet, time advances despite it all. i change. i grow up. things that used to fill my chest with a marshmallow-sweet feeling dull over time, fading as if the joy was being leeched from them.

i am growing, even if i so desperately didn't want to. now, i don't feel as trapped in the past. i look to the future with a sort of desperate hope, wishing that someday i could etch a corner of my own into this world that seems so much bigger than me.

i guess i haven't really changed, after it all. i still hunger for that small shelter from the thunderstorms and tsunamis, one that shines softly and steadily like a lighthouse in the dark for my lost and terrified little boat.

but i'm not scared of the future, now. i'm not clinging to the past, either. i'm growing. i'm changing. i'm getting better. maybe that's all that matters, in this kaleidoscope of broken glass and hanging vines.