Niranor

I want to spin in circles like when I was a child and falling flat on the grass, watch the world twirl and twirl. I want to giggle. I want to sing badly, incorrectly with my whole chest.

I want time to move like slow melting butter while I'm blissfully, willfully, ignorant of its passing.

I want turn my phone off and just inwardly focus on the internal world within me for hours. And have no one need me.

I want to cry and rage. I want to sing songs that scream of my pain at the top of my lungs. I want to lash out with no repercussions.

I want to hear my baby niece ask me for "her colors" again. And use those chalks to make animals with her again. This was when I was still "Annie" and she could NOT say my full legal name and sound like a divorce attorney.

I want the year after I graduated highschool. A summer in the 2010's. We still used Myspace. Barely knew about Facebook. I had a flip phone. Black chokers, listened to Jimmy eat world, coheed and Cambria and Sum 41, 303, neon trees, motion city sound track. Sequoia prep school.

I had endless time, no curfew, no rules and not a dollar to my name.

I miss the freedom of that endless summer stretching ahead, while I slowly perused the wonder and hope... of who I wold be someday.

That golden, humid summer of 2015. Sleepless nights huddled in my grandmother's carport at 2 am to catch her wifi while I giggled quietly to the messages from the boy I liked. None the wiser.

Life was so. Simple. So good. My parents were still young and acted like teenagers.

My grandpa was alive and my grandma was happy and loved us.

Today... we trudge through difficulties and immense pressure. We shrug off injustices and facts of reality today we would have been aghast at a decade ago. Because now it's just another tuwsday.

We're too plugged in. We're too monitored. We're too nickeled & dimed. We're less real. We're grey, micromanaged, over scheduled washed out versions of the humans we are in our hearts. Our souls are vibrant. But we hunt for the next paycheck. The next bill paid. The next chance to catch a breather. Consumerism. Over priced vacations to look forward to. I'd you can afford it. Everything is after paid or on a credit card.

We are being trained to only find the joy in things we can buy. Any skill or hobby has to be sellable. We all need to go viral.

My dad, he loves ice cream sandwiches. The super cheap ones. It's such a simple thing that when I see them at Kroger I'm shocked at how we've been trained to think happy is something you have to work so hard for.

When is the last time I rode my bike and watched the green leaves fly past as the sun dappled on my shoulders?

When is the last time I danced and sang with my sisters.

When is the last time I really hugged my mom?

I bought my parents a security camera. I see them go to work. Take out the trash. Go to work. Take out the trash.

And go to work.