Notebook 022

A Lesson I Didn't Want To Learn
Journal Entry: Fri Jan 27, 2006, 12:39 AM



Life has been taken off the shelf; disrobed of it's fashionable laminated wrapper. The appeal has all gone.

I remember the years before, gazing upward with awe, at something I thought so special and unique. So precious. I've reached up and grabbed it off the stand, greedy hands fat with curiosity. Already clutching it at my chest, I've gained twenty years in a matter of seconds.

And here I am; confused and stricken with a loss of something I'm not sure I ever really had.

I see his innocent eyes gleaming at the life on the shelf he cannot quite reach. How I'd love to whisper twenty years experience into his small fragile ears. How I'd love to watch him walk away, not really understanding what he's just been told.

They never told me how quick 'growing up' really is. Like listening to the right song at exactly the right time, reveling in the layers that no one on earth could possibly understand the way you do right now, just for it all to be stopped and snapped in front of your face before you realise what the moment really was. The silent and effortless exhale that drains all inflation from your face, sags all positivity into a dissipated vaccuous void that you can all but look at, wondering what it was that just nearly became.

"One more minute. One more second even!" screams the face of the young boy.

"If I had that," I reply "I wouldn't even be here right now to do this. No one wants it, or to have to do this, but sometimes things don't make sense. Sometimes soon you'll both curse and thank the day you heard these words."

I never understood what he meant, and I hope I never want to.