We All Carry Ghosts

✩ A New Kind of Neverland ✩

✩ A New Kind of Neverland ✩

Childhood is a lot of things. It is sunshine and early bedtimes and goodnight kisses after your parents tuck you into bed and playing in the backyard, making fairy ponds with your little sister because while you don't believe any fairies will come, you do believe in magic. It is bounding out of bed on Christmas morning and having tea parties underwater with your eyes squeezed shut because you're afraid it will hurt to open them.

But the end of childhood is not when someone you love dies. Instead, it is a slow burn. It is waking up and immediately noticing how the clouds mean rain, which no longer means splashing in puddles with your little yellow rain boots. No, it means glasses spotted with falling droplets, submerged cotton socks squishing with every step, soaked-through sweaters and dripping, tangled strands of long, slick hair. It is watching your friends slip away into toxic relationships or the false lull of commodities. It is sitting alone and wondering when childish things stopped bringing you so much joy, the way a broken doll house used to make you smile. It is a wild, beautiful, and terrible tapestry of discovering that the time has finally come to shed the colors of innocence.

All we can do is embrace it: the gentle, fleeting moments; harsh, angry moments; miraculous, joyful moments; dreamy, hazy moments; the soft and violent moments that collide in a spectacular view of trust and revelation... If we do—if we truly hold tight to the fading daydreams, to the simple flecks of golden power, to the whimsical nature of imagination—then we will stay above the water, push back against the howling, angry winds, and fly.