it is time to live again
I do a counseling group for teens who have babies. I found out one of my clients is in the eighth grade, the other 17 with a one year old. I try to think of when I was that age. I was boiling pencils and burning newspapers in my kitchen just to see what would happen. I was jumping through hotel room hallways because i was kissed for the first time. I was having cookie dough fights while rollerblading in my kitchen and riding around listening to led zeppelin in an old cougar just because i could.
I try to relate but all I can do is try to teach them to be good parents and how to deal with the upcoming stress that I have read about in textbooks and learned about from family. It breaks my heart, but a lot of my job does.
After the group i was driving home on the ccc and remembered driving on the interstate with the sunroof open standing on the passenger seat, arms out, the closest to flying we could get.
When did that innocence go away? Perhaps after the 1000th cigarette or the 800th beer.
But that child in the park still has our eyes; the woman in the antique shop knows our secrets from the past, our lost creativity, our lost joy without care.
The creations used to flow from our fingertips, our tongues, our hearts; like colored ribbons, like water falls, like lightening. Suddenly!. The lightening bolts and exclamation points forever marking our skin are there to remind us of this unadulterated fun we had, this abundance of creativity this innocence that we somehow protected until we all spread apart, like a diaspora of those with shining eyes and the ability to create something amazing out of thin air. I know that person is still inside of me, and i will find her. I know those people are still inside all of us, crying to get out, bouncing against the walls of the padded rooms we have locked them in.
Lost innocence is something that seems inevitable, but I have come to believe it can never be lost. We did not have to grow up so fast; we had our ideas, our strong ingenious minds, and something else that can not be defined in words, but only by the wind that rushes past you as you are holding your arms out closing our eyes and standing out of a sunroof going 80 on the interstate.
It is still there.
If we find it we can save the world.
I try to relate but all I can do is try to teach them to be good parents and how to deal with the upcoming stress that I have read about in textbooks and learned about from family. It breaks my heart, but a lot of my job does.
After the group i was driving home on the ccc and remembered driving on the interstate with the sunroof open standing on the passenger seat, arms out, the closest to flying we could get.
When did that innocence go away? Perhaps after the 1000th cigarette or the 800th beer.
But that child in the park still has our eyes; the woman in the antique shop knows our secrets from the past, our lost creativity, our lost joy without care.
The creations used to flow from our fingertips, our tongues, our hearts; like colored ribbons, like water falls, like lightening. Suddenly!. The lightening bolts and exclamation points forever marking our skin are there to remind us of this unadulterated fun we had, this abundance of creativity this innocence that we somehow protected until we all spread apart, like a diaspora of those with shining eyes and the ability to create something amazing out of thin air. I know that person is still inside of me, and i will find her. I know those people are still inside all of us, crying to get out, bouncing against the walls of the padded rooms we have locked them in.
Lost innocence is something that seems inevitable, but I have come to believe it can never be lost. We did not have to grow up so fast; we had our ideas, our strong ingenious minds, and something else that can not be defined in words, but only by the wind that rushes past you as you are holding your arms out closing our eyes and standing out of a sunroof going 80 on the interstate.
It is still there.
If we find it we can save the world.