Robbed off of Innocence

I was marooned in a glass room, suspended in the midst of nowhere and probably a place nestling away in my stupor, where the chilly air had enveloped my skin throughout and penetrated through my scalp and my fingers clasped tightly around the photo album I had found which narrated stories from days of blissful and innocent past. I was forlorn. I was trapped inside a giant globule of reminiscence of my childhood, where I had not known what was right and what was wrong and where each passing minute was filled with strolling by the parks or down the corridors in houses filled with tension or otherwise, with equanimous gait. I wanted it all back. I wished for a release out of this mortal sadness and happiness and drift away like the florets of a dandelion carrying with it nothing but innocence.

I seemed to like this grasp in my own prison where I found all but a quaint peace with the photo album in my hands. I flipped the pages and saw snippets of my childhood pass in front of my eyes. I wished deeply for had I understood what the reality meant at the time when I was blithe as a lark, I would’ve cherished the innocence that I was entitled to, but gave it away to pure malice as I grew and all that remained was tar. No preservations could have kept it for long. No compelling restrictions over its expiry would make any difference for it to disappear. All that remained is tar and my heart felt like a stone trying to force blood from its crevices and my breathing turned haggard because I was tired. I was tired of all the malice.

The, suddenly something jolted me from my firm position, my body succumbed to the coldness fought the ague, I was shook hard and I stared aghast at the cracks forming before my eyes on the walls of the glass room. The photo album in my hand began disintegrating and I wailed aloud because I wanted to let go of everything along with it. My head hit the wall hard and as I held my head with my eyes shut tight and moaning with the throbbing pain, I opened my eyes finding myself in a room, where the walls were whitewashed and the table fan oscillated lazily, blowing wind on my face and on my grandmother, who sat next to me with a bemused expression, wondering what had happened to my head that I still held on to it so tight.

I woke up heaving a sigh of relief, because albeit the serenity the photo album had given me in the dream, I knew I had lost all the childlike perspective I once had and that had once made many grown men and women smile or grimace. I had to live up to my youth and make memories like no other, so I could look back and still know that I still had great amounts of innocence even yesterday and the day before and I never noticed it.

This is one of life’s greatest gifts to us. We make memories. We lose our precious qualities that we inherited from the unknown. We grow. We change. This change is an everlasting constant. All we can do now is look back and smile because we never missed out on anything great. The quality of innocence. The very existence of it that had embellished our bodies, we never missed out on experiencing that.

For that I am grateful.

For that was life’s greatest gift to me.