We used to be so innocent,

when we were little kids.

Playing around on the playground with our friends.

Coloring outside the lines in our coloring books. 

Waking up extra early just to watch Sesame Street. 

Life was effortless. Manageable. Simple. 

And now we wonder what happened to that simpleness?

What happened?

The answer is quite simple, just three little words.

We. Grew. Up.

Life is no longer how it used to be.

It went from simple and manageable to complicated and problematic,

in only a matter of a few years,

Our parents tried to prepare us, to educate us

about all the obstacles we would come to face,

but nobody could have ever prepped us for what lay ahead.

We were on our own. Every man for himself.

There were so many lessons to learn.

The first, was that our imagined versions of the world were nowhere close to reality.

We were always so calm and unbothered by the world around us,

oblivious to its treacherous nature.

Growing up changed all that.

The monsters we thought were under our beds and in our closets

were really in our minds and sometimes standing right in front of us.

We ARE the monsters that we were always so afraid of.

It all makes sense now, right?

Our imagined fear wasn't so imagined.

Our little brains were just trying to give us a warning for what the future held.

But we, we were too young and naive to comprehend the hidden messages.

We were too caught up in our imagination.

Wanting, needing to believe that it was real.

But it wasn't. It was all an act, a dream.

We were so busy living in that dream, we forgot nightmares were dreams too

and that's exactly what our life became.

A bunch of mixed up nightmares

that we couldn't escape from, couldn't get rid of.