This is As…We by yours truly.
I’ve never been able to get this on paper.

But today I did.

So, As…We a study of innocents and the heart.

As young children,
The children who believed sickness was only for a few days;
The children who knew nothing of death;
The children who believed every fair tale Walt Disney, or dad, or mom would say.
We smiled, and believed we could do anything.

As kids,
The kids who feared no cut or scrape;
The kids who went off to school and learned new things;
The kids who only needed a simple playground to escape.
We laughed, and brushed off trivial things.

As preteens,
The preteens who learned weird things and turned red in group talks about sex;
The preteens who wrote secrets in new journals;
The preteens who got their first boyfriend or girlfriend, and maybe their first ex.
We sighed and wished we were older.

As teens,
The teens who were offered harder courses and made hard choices and did things like say no to drugs;
The teens who got their first car or job or loves;
The teens who missed simplicity because relationships had escalated to more than hugs.
We frowned, and raised our white flag, and took back our wishes to be older and replaced them with wishes to be young again.

As adults,
The adults who fall in actual love and marry;
The adults who have children and bills and miss our own parents;
The adults who look into our spouses eyes because they are our new escape and a better place to hide when things get scary.
We breathe easy and thank God or who ever that we gave up who we used to be.

As elderly people,
The elderly who know a grandchild’s love;
The elderly who spoke life lessons, and fixed hearts, and talked our own kids through alcohol sex and drugs;
The elderly who held a loved ones hand and maybe it was our spouse or at least someone we made memories with, but they weren’t right beside us, they were somewhere up above.
We felt full and our hearts had grown, and we thank ourselves for growing up.

As a person,
A person who has grown;
A person who has seen unspeakable things;
A person who created a heart made of steal and a way to deal with problems that was all our own.
We thought about how our white flags weren’t a way to quit
but a patch to add on to what we had become.

We see us as us.

XOXO
Nealie