A childhood so pure

As I sat on the swings, I took a moment to appreciate the scenery that I’d been gifted with. The arrogant waves crashed onto the shore, erasing one’s footprints from the sand where memories had been embedded. The ocean teemed with fragments of emptiness, but many failed to see how expressive and exhaustive it can be at the same time. The place around me felt so full, but somehow I felt so empty. So hopeless. Like a memory that can’t be recalled. The place around me lit up, and I watched how the shadows were chasing one another while being ignored at the same time. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned by just being here, it's that the pain I feel is not my heart crying; it's all the emptiness that I’ve felt for such a long time, wanting to be free.

Every day, I wish to go back home. Home is a place where our childhood memories feel safe and loved. Home is a feeling. And for the first time in years, I finally felt it. I felt all my evocative memories drown me in my own abyss. I looked around once more, watching the children as they created their childhoods and reminiscing about the times I'd had here while creating mine. Wanting to go back in time to recapture those moments. Childhood is the one story that stands out in every soul. Some may have had a memorable childhood. Some may have had trauma tightly wrapped around their childhood that’s never to be mentioned again. And then there are some who have not graduated from their childhood yet.

I got up on my feet and headed towards where my home had always been. Where the land meets the sea, I find fragments of the younger me.