It’s almost as if I was robbed of my innocence and youth to waking up one morning to having to meet society's standards. The world was simple and nothing darkened my days. I yearned for those memories of sanity and sweet peace.

Sitting in my mom’s car on a warm summer day as my dad filled up the gas tank of her car, the leather seats burned my skin from the scorching summer sun. The smell of gasoline filled the air and somehow such a simple memory, a mere smell stuck with me through my youth making me love the smell of gas.

But with the financial responsibility of growing up, the smell of gas frenzied me. Insightful that money will be coming out of pockets, I couldn't enjoy that smell of gas because of how much money I would soon be losing.

But where did the time go when I didn't worry about money? When I didn't have to pay for items with the hours of my life.

The satisfaction of enjoying a chocolate ice cream was the best feeling, but now I must work a one hour shift to earn the money to enjoy a simple ice cream.

How wrong was I to think that everything would remain simple.

Simple was the sound of my dad coming home from work. The garage door creaking, followed by soft footsteps coming up from the basement as I sat in the living room, alongside my two brothers, with the aroma of a home cooked meal from the kitchen being prepared.

That distant memory is now replaced with me being locked in a room studying for a test that I won't even pass. Now I am too tired to get up and hug my dad, too stressed to eat that home cooked meal being prepared, its funny how reality set in so fast without me even noticing.

I long for the day when I adored the sport yet when the love for the sport turned into training year round just to get a decent amount of money for college; I lost my sense of sanity. The more I trained the more an absence for the love of the sport formed until I forgot why I started playing the sport in the first place.

I lost myself along the route of growing up, when society started having standards and I thought I had to meet them.

I got lost in the mix of worrying about what clothes I was wearing, how much I weighed, how to maintain my weight and how I looked on the outside. These weren't potential problems to be worrying about; this was my innocence and confidence being taken right away from me. These elements didn’t matter when I was younger but the older I got the more everything started to matter. Those long intervals of easiness and peace of my minority is what I miss.

I fell in love with not only my youth but the clarity and simplicity of it all. Where anything could be cured with a tight hug and problems didn't linger in my head for weeks. I was invincible and independent. Why did I want to grow up so fast, all this hype about growing up turned out to be a letdown. For maybe one day I can enjoy that smell of gas again. One day a sense for the love of the sport will surrender me and remind me why I loved it in the first place. One day it will all make sense maybe not today or tomorrow but, one day when I'm robbed of my teen years and wakeup an adult for I will be desirous for what I am resentful to now.