going back.

the older i get, the more people i meet, the more i find out how much i've been missing out on.

i find myself reading and rereading old childhood gems that went ignored in my mother's effort to fashion 3 grown-up women out of her own regrets: a method that inadvertently let me forget to grow.

so now when i read Rowling or Silverstein or Juster, i'm learning more - or about the same - from them as i have from my fledgling adulthood or the presumptuously Big World i was once convinced had all the answers to all the questions i could ever have.

but the truth is, i'm coming to find that i haven't been asking the right questions or the most honest ones.

or any, even.

for so long my truest voice has gone unheared and unused, drowned out by that wful din of other voices - borrowed voices - that for too long spoke for me.

so now i'm constructing my own Neverland: walls built high to keep it untainted and unchecked and my own.

to guard the foundations of unconditional love and generosity and curiosity and hope and courage and the unyielding promise for change and growth that can come by taking the time to enjoy the simple pleasures of quiet nights or flapping sails or leaves that brown in fall.

all these things get lost in translation, between the jump from brief childhood innocence to supposed budding and predtermined adulthood.

all too often i see that missing glint in the eyes of passersby, jaded friends and family who, having long since passed that age of wonder, have lost that purity and strength of heart that got them here in the first place.

i wouldn't say that i'm a bad person, or an idealistic one, and i'd like to think that i'm kind and gentle, but i would also add that i'm unwise and unlearned, and the more i see those faded or absent sparks, the more i want to find out where they went.

have i lost m ine?

can you lose something you're not sure you ever had?

i'm on a quest now for my own Rhyme and Reason, to discover my own glint and help return those missing to the eyes of their desperate and rightful owners.

the fact of the matter is, though, i'm not a child.

a full recovery of what's been missing is now intermingled with the grown-up experiences - few as they are - that i've been able to collect.

so now, interspersed with mentions of spellbooks and giving trees and trusty watchdogs are cigarettes, red cups, and faulty relationships.

the point here - the upside to all of this - is that i'm learning on my own.

i'm growing.

changing.

finding and using my own voice to say things like, "No," or, "I'll give it a try."

in attempting to fashion my own person - my own beginnings, because this really is my beginning - with the pages of presumably childish fare, and the erratic events and experiences that are forging my adulthood, i am building something new, fine, and, to an extent, pure.

i'm creating me.