The Things I Lost Growing Up

Let me sleep sad, wake happy. Bathe in hope, eat my peace, drink my melancholy. Wade through despair, work through hardship, wash my sorrow. In the safety my blanket brings, I lay, slumber, and repeat. Yet I long to sleep happy, wake overjoyed, with each day like Christmas morning, when I was young. I’d wake excited, forgetting there were rules to obey. Why do I forget the times when I was simply glad to be a child, before I began wishing to be old enough to give the orders? I was naive, thinking wealth would come with age, not effort. But now I’ve been kicked from the nest, my coming of age complete, another soul among my predecessors, pushing the boulder up the never-ending hill.