Losing sight of naivety.

I’ve always been older than everyone else. And when I say that, I don’t mean it in the literal sense. Physically, I am young. Mentally, I am… different. Older. I understand more than I’m supposed to. I can’t tell you how many times someone has said to me, “Are you sure you’re only thirteen?” And I would reply with a smile and a careful laugh. Of course I never took those words to heart. Maybe I seemed a little more mature than others in my age group - so what?

I went on living my life just a step ahead of others my age until I turned thirteen. There was a day a few months after my birthday that I realized, “I’m finally a teenager. I’ve been waiting for this since I was a little kid. And now what? What has changed?”

The truth was, nothing had. Of course I had more pressure and responsibility loaded onto my shoulders, but that happened every year. Whenever you grow a year older, people view it as the chance to throw another piece of reality at you. It's supposed to come gradually - but a lot of times it doesn't. You might wake up one day, walk down the stairs, and Mommy and Daddy are sitting there with awkward smiles and a pat on the back. They might give you “the talk” or they might even want to do something as simple as discuss with you the fact that your grades have been slipping in school lately. And then suddenly you're thinking about what you could do to be better, and that leads to thoughts about what you're going to do with the rest of your life. And then there is a huge amount of pressure that labors your every breath. That's when you realize that to go somewhere in life, you're going to have to amount to something more than what you are now.

Whatever way you come to that realization, the universal point is that growing up is not meant to be taken gently. Often times maturity is received like a slap in the face. It can come from your actions and finally realizing how they affect the people around you, or it can come from something as simple as someone telling you that you need to ‘grow up’. Usually it’s both.

For me, it was neither. I remember being in elementary school and coming home each day with a head full of observations and complaints. I would sit down and tell my parents what had happened throughout the school day - and why I hated this girl or that boy. My reasons often had to do with the fact that I felt they didn’t like me. And I never truly understood why.

But now as I sit here writing this, I’m sure I do. I didn’t understand at that age that they didn’t see things the way I do. Sometimes I still feel that way. When someone makes a homophobic comment or a joke, or throws around a racial slur like it should be taken lightly, I cringe. And I think, ‘why am I not like that?’. Surely it can’t be all because of my parents and how I was raised.

They raised me wonderfully, yes, but they couldn’t of had this much of an impact on my young life, right? They brought me up no differently than another good mother or father would. I was taught to be polite, to eat healthy, and to suck up to others because that was the only way to get anywhere in a life full of ignorant people. I had to figure out most of things I see now without their help.

Other than the simple rules of childhood etiquette, I learned the rest on my own. Usually I realized things about life through other people’s actions and words without even meaning to. I would be sitting at a table at lunchtime in Middle School, sometimes alone, and I would just watch people. I would examine the way they smiled and laughed and frowned. Their social interactions fascinated me, and on several occasions, disgusted me.

The day I heard someone yell out, “FAG!” at someone else in Middle School was the day I lost the rest of my childlike innocence. It really was like a slap in the face, because though the words were not directed at me, and I only knew vaguely of their meaning at the time, I knew that no one should have to hear that thrown at them. It destroyed something inside of me - it might’ve been my happiness, or it might’ve just been the remaining naivety I held on to.

Or perhaps it was both.