When I was a kid, I tried to grow up too fast. I was always trying to look older—strolling around the house in mom’s high heels and lipstick, shaving my legs too early, etc. And as the younger sibling, I was always trying to prove that I could hang with the big kids (efforts which often proved unsuccessful). But I also became self-conscious at a curiously young age—I became worried about doing the right thing, the normal thing, doing the things that might convince others I was normal, I was worthy. But worthy of what? Did I have anything to hide or be ashamed of? No, I was a kid! And I have trouble exactly explaining why I lived this way; it’s actually sort of ridiculous!

Without noticing what was happening, I condemned mistakes and decided to firmly deny them, and I took away my own ability to formulate my own opinions—even my own questions—and to speak out. I would do my reading and my homework to get it done, but never saw it as something I could personally react to. In fact, it took me a while to see the world as something I could really react to. There was the way things were, and the rights, and the wrongs, and the good, and the bad. Simple as that. I always wanted to be good.

The irony here, however, is that wasn't always good. I actually did make a lot of mistakes, and even to this day, I feel guilty for hiding them and pretending they didn’t happen, for depriving myself the opportunity to learn from them. I didn’t always do everything perfectly! What a surprise. Sometimes I wouldn’t do my reading and then feel anxious that the teacher would call on me the whole time instead of just telling her that I didn’t do it. Sometimes I would copy answers from the kid next to me during “mad minutes” in elementary school math to seem like I was faster at them when those dumb slips of paper were actually something I really struggled with. And that would have been okay to say. And I probably wasn’t alone. And I maybe would have been better at math later on if I had taken the time then to acknowledge and to work on my imperfection, rather than denying it. I was so afraid of messing up, of not being perfect and good in the eyes of both my peers and the adults in my life, that I took my own voice away. Sometimes I wonder whether I ever had a voice at all. Even now, I feel like I am only beginning to discover it.

Now I don’t mean to make myself out as a victim. Because I am not a victim in this story, and I am not a damaged person because I was this way as a child; I was simply, as it seems to me now, an odd case. I found creativity and individuality in other places, outside of school. But whatever ‘world of my own’ I created in my backyard, whatever stories I made up, were, to me, never anything to take much notice of, never seemed important. The important thing was to be seen by the world as “good.” There are a number of things I can think of that may well have contributed to this mentality, but I prefer not to dwell or to blame, but rather to take this story as something to learn from.

So here is my voice: kids should be kids!! And in many ways, we should never stop being kids! Curiosity, messiness, creativity, loudness, laughter, silliness, snuggles, tears; children are these brilliant, spirited balls of light, buzzing full to the brim of all the things that make us human. Before middle school, kids really don’t give a hoot about what anyone thinks! And we love them for it. So let’s play outside more, let’s dance whenever we feel like it, let’s scream and run towards the people we’re excited to see, let’s think about life in simpler terms, let’s be kinder because it makes more sense to be nice than it does to be mean, let’s embrace the messiness and the mistakes then move forward to keep on blossoming. I refuse to believe that there is a limit to how tall and wide and vibrant we can grow. After all, I’ve still got some catching up to do. And how grateful am I to have this wonderful journey ahead of me…that we all do!