Nostalgia for Childhood

Have you ever felt like the days just slip through your fingers? Maybe you feel like you haven't been very productive lately? Maybe you start wondering if you really are significant to anyone around you? Maybe you feel caught in a perpetual "transition" stage and wonder if your life is ever really going to go somewhere? Well, of course I wouldn't likely be writing this if I wasn't experiencing all this, and more, myself.

I watched the film The Holiday the other night. The plot was extremely predictable, but funny and "cute" in its own way. I was delighted to watch it, though that may have been because I was with one of my closest friends. But then on my 45-minute drive back home, I felt saddened (to put it mildly) and frustrated because I knew Hollywood just did so well to make this quaint little movie and of course have a happy ending for the viewers...but where did that leave me when I identified so well with one of the characters in the film? Where did that leave me when I identified with her as she was before the "happy ending"? It left me more bruised, so to speak. I might have to avoid movies like that altogether because I, like many women, end up thinking that I'll eventually find that "happy ending" when the reality is that the "happy endings" are a facade.

Reminds me of the book Captivating by John and Stasi Eldridge, in which Stasi discusses how much little girls and women alike love to be princesses, essentially...the "beauty" of some hero's story and adventure...and how girls and women alike love to live this desire vicariously through romantic movies and books and dress-up and such...but then the real world does a thorough job of crushing and stifling that female fantasy/desire and tells the woman to "toughen up." And what is the world left with? Not women. Merely a female gender of sorts who is utterly ashamed of being who she is...a woman.

I've been thinking more and more about how I miss my childhood. The days now seem like they just slip by without me even noticing...and what shall I say I've done? Stress out about not having a job? Cry because my heart has been broken a kazillion times? Sit alone and lonely because no one calls? Sit around wanting to write but not writing because of feeling guilty for not having a job?

How I do miss my childhood when things seemed so much simpler! I miss being the "tom boy" of the neighborhood and all my friends looking to me to be the "daring one" to try something risky. I miss how the highlight of the day was hunting for snipes, playing Littles (long story), riding bikes, playing make-believe, "shooting some hoops," or selling cheap lemonade. I miss the days when my biggest worries were taking cactus prickles out of my basketball, trying not to get caught in a lie, trying to avoid eating vegetables at dinner, or trying to beat one of my nintendo games. I miss using two of our friends' back yards as one long sledding hill when it snowed. I miss running into the house to stand in front of the window unit in the hot summers...I guess that was before we had air conditioning...

Now I must go to bed...another day slips on by...