Why I Will Always be a Kid at Heart.

"Don't Grow up. It's a trap!"

-Peter Pan

I am going to be 30 years old pretty soon and still sleep with stuffies. Giant ones at that! I also still play with my vintage Betty Spaghettis that I hunted down as an adult because I felt nostalgic. I will have nerf gun fights all day. I blow bubbles for hours. I giggle at things most people wouldn't find amusing unless they were under the age of 12. I watch cartoons in bed on Saturdays. I also kept a huge box I got in the mail and decorated it. It's in the kitchen and I sit in it sometimes. I have even napped in it. I was surprised my roommate allowed us to really keep it.

Basically, I am a kid in an adult body.

Except I have to pay bills and deal with adult sized burdens and you know what? That is exactly why remaining a kid in other ways is so important to me. I don't want to lose the "magic" of being a kid. The reason being a kid was "magical" even for me, who was being abused, is because everything was new and mysterious and there really seemed to be endless possibilities. Most kids feel like anything is possible.

When I was about 6 we were asked what cars we would own when we were older on a class assignment. I wrote Lamborghini and the teacher let me know the price. "I will have a Lamborghini!" I said and I believed it.

That's the thing. When we are kids nothing is holding us back. It doesn't matter how stacked against the odds are we feel like we can do anything. We feel invisible. So, now that I am 30 but feeling 70 due to multiple debilitating illnesses I like to keep that part of me alive. It is why I keep trudging along. It is part of how I never give up. I hold the belief that anything really is possible. No matter how many times I should feel proven wrong.

Don't let the kid in you die!

We know we are adults. Many of us have faced incomprehensible hardships and trauma. We've battled disease, abuse, faced death. But I ask that in spite of all of this you try to make time to go back to being a kid. You don't have to bust out the bubble - though, you should try!- or sleep with stuffies. You see, being a kid is a mindset. Try to keep the wonderment alive. Try to keep that feeling of "I am invisible and I can alive! Try not to focus only on the doom and gloom in life. Kids hardly ever do! You see kids facing cancer in hospitals and usually they are laughing and playing! Try to, at least sometimes, put it all aside and feel like a kid.

Stock photos aside, the ocean really is a great place to be a kid. If you are physically capable go to the beach, get in the water, let the waves crash into you! Be taken under. Swim up and do it again! Be reminded how small you are and how grand the universe is!

Go have fun! Go play! Go be a kid!