exhale.

Real

When?

When did it all get so real?

It seems just yesterday we were children, without a care in the world. Staging adventures every lunchtime at school.

Every day a new fantastical destination.

The world was our oyster and nothing could stop us.

When did it all stop?

When did the walls on our seemingly limitless freedom, start to close in?

When did it become easier to cry than to smile?

Now even the happiest jokes, seem to have a depressing undercurrent.

And the bad times?

They knock you down with more force than any tsunami wave we pretended to survive on the playground.

When did we stop wanting to grown up?

Decide that the world, the real world, was too scary?

Our problems and battles no longer end with the ringing of a bell to signal the end of lunch.

Instead, they persist.

Ebbing and flowing with the tide of our uncontrollable emotions.

When did it all get so real?

And how can I go back...