The Bittersweetness of Growing Up
When I was younger, my blood coursed blazing hot. I would run my mouth afoul in forums, made my opinions known as loudly or hurtful as they could be. I resented the kind of adults who would look at us neutrally, saying, "It would be alright." A proof of cowardice sitting on the fence, neither encouraging nor discouraging. A proof of not caring enough, for how could they fail to see how important the matter was to us?
You have seen it play out multiple times. You know the plot by heart.
I cooled down, hopefully from maturing perspectives instead of the weakening of will, and whenever I see the children I would like to be the one who could assure them, "It would be alright." Time did heal a lot of things, soften the edges. We look back and we wonder why we were so angry, so unreasonable. We laugh.
Honestly though? I grew up to be an uncool adult by teenage me's standards. I have a string of respectable jobs and managed to lose each one. I drown semi-routinely and have to fish myself out of the funk every single time to mime a functional person. I'm probably the last person you can trust when I say, "It would be alright." Especially because most of the children aren't actually children anymore, they're technically grown-ups leading a more conventionally proper life than mine.
Yet still, I would like to be someone like that. Someone who could sincerely say it's going to be alright. Someone who could say it matters. The tree did not fall silently in a forest. I saw it. I heard you. Someone who could tell you home is not where you came from, but where you could return to even after many years have passed. Welcome you back. Even if home is ever-changing and it may not even be the same home you and I remember.
For that tenuous bond, a fragile, imperfect one, could still be a light in the dark when you need one.
We would figure it out.
Somehow.
Maybe together, maybe not. But we would figure it out, and when that time comes, I hope you know the way back home. You still have one.
It's a grandiose vision for someone who has difficulty imagining tomorrow, a laughable ideal for someone who professed to hate people. We run together under the sky each towards different goals. Across time and space, our paths intersect, and for a single moment I would tell everyone.
It would be alright.