{"id":23505,"date":"2026-08-12T16:51:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T21:51:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/?p=23505"},"modified":"2026-08-12T16:51:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T21:51:40","slug":"young-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/2026\/08\/12\/young-dreams\/","title":{"rendered":"Young dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">What would you do if your child thought they were a monster? How do you explain emotions, feelings, things that are bound to happen: pain, love, loss, life, to one so young? You don&#8217;t. Or you do and hope they turn out alright. There is no proven way to grow up. Pain is necessary. Love is subjective. Children are incredibly programmable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think about the things I was taught when I was young and wonder how many of my beliefs were chosen by me, and how many were simply handed to me before I knew I could question them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I believe I am responsible for everything in my life. That is a belief I have chosen in recent years (and am still working on). Not necessarily because I caused everything, but because if I take responsibility for what has happened for me, there is no one left to blame. I am not a victim of anything. It works for me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Everything is as it should be. Even the things I don&#8217;t like. Even the things I disagree with. There doesn&#8217;t have to be a &#8220;should.&#8221; Everything is subject to change, and that&#8217;s okay. If I want to change anything at all, I have to change something within myself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Maybe that is why I try to avoid spending too much of my energy obsessing over all the &#8216;wrong&#8217; that can exist. I do not believe any good would come out of me dropping everything to hyper-fixate on problems I cannot immediately solve. I also want to reach a point where I can observe what I consider wrong in this world without feeling the need to fight against its existence. Just things to notice, accept if I can, and let go of.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I want everything to flow smoothly.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But do I?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Occasionally I imagine a life where nothing is &#8216;wrong&#8217; and it sounds unbearably uneventful. Maybe that&#8217;s a limiting thought. Fun, dramatic, beautiful things can happen without disasters. A life can be eventful without being painful. But sometimes it sounds like a nice break.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Speaking of breaks, there is escapism.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I wish I could drown everything out. I don&#8217;t fully know why. Some part of me does, probably, but I don&#8217;t want to deal with that any time soon. Denial. I don&#8217;t know how long I&#8217;ve been doing this.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I have spent so much time trying to understand whether I want to be here, whether I want to stay happy, whether I want anything at all.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I want to be content. Whole. Alive. I sometimes mistake detachment for peace. And sometimes it is. But I think there is something in me that wants success, certainty, more <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">life<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. I realize those are normal human desires. But at the same time there is a part of me that would just love to not feel anything. Not want anything. Not even numbness. Just free. But maybe that&#8217;s why I am here. To learn and accept.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I can&#8217;t make sense of a lot of my thoughts most of the time. Or I just don&#8217;t want to. I&#8217;m trying to improve that. Trying to grab them more often and solidify them in front of me so I can look at what&#8217;s actually going on inside of me and deal with it rather than keep pushing it around and away.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I&#8217;m just trying to figure myself out and not only have little glimpses of realization only to overthink it all and drift back to inceptions. I need to remind myself that it is okay to stay adrift for a while though, as long as I eventually find some grounding path.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don&#8217;t have a coherent idea of what I&#8217;m doing with my life yet, but I&#8217;m still here, still questioning, still choosing to keep going, and even if I don&#8217;t figure it all out it will still be worth it. I choose to believe so.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I don&#8217;t know why this is what my thoughts spilled into but I&#8217;m glad I got this out of me. Thank you.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What would you do if your child thought they were a monster? How do you explain emotions, feelings, things that are bound to happen: pain, love, loss, life, to one so young? You don&#8217;t. Or you do and hope they turn out alright. There is no proven way to grow up. Pain is necessary. Love &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/2026\/08\/12\/young-dreams\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Young dreams&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23505"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23505"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23507,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23505\/revisions\/23507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}