What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

Not everyone grows up to be a good person. It's sad to consider, and I wish I did not have to. It is perhaps the greatest peril with aging into adulthood. I became aware. And, people change, despite best efforts, into monsters. It's hard to say who really deserves the blame for the concoction of socialization, parenting, and genetic luck that created them or to measure how much of it was a personal choice.

When we sat around campfires giggling and telling scary stories as kids, we had no clue that some of us would become another person's nightmare. That they would grow up to assault, abuse, and torment. I wrestle with it still, the child version I loved compared to the adult they became. They live in my mind like two separate entities.

We ran through the woods, sticks as swords, mimicking slaying villains and beasts. The child version of us so plainly understood what it was to be mean and cruel. Late at night in the chill of fall, we would sit shivering under a thin blanket on the trampoline while stars fell, speculating about our parents. We would talk about the things they did that were wrong. About what we would not repeat. A million confessions of hurt and frustration were confided in each other. Yet somehow, some of us grew up to discard all of those lessons and all of those laments.

I am not foolish enough to cling to the few good attributes someone presents if overwhelmingly they are corrupted. Nor do I let the memories of them taint the present version. Others around me do. I hear them whisper of it.

"But they were so sweet when they were a kid."

Or perhaps they dismiss it.

"Are you sure that's what happened? Have you talked to them?"

The worst offense is when someone else reminds me that they are family. As if their connection to my blood should mean something to me. Alas, I may find familiarity in their face of my own, but I cannot find any goodness in their heart. The blood between us is a mockery, useless. Something bitter in it found them.

I once knew them. Admired their boldness and stewarded their uncertainty. Perhaps that is why it is so difficult to let go if the image of them, bright eyed and eager to face the world. How do you say goodbye to the mirror of your youth? It stings. They are stamped on every crucial memory of my childhood. And perhaps that's why some of our circle cannot let them go.

Not me though. They buried who they once were in the grave of their childhood. Our childhood. It rots and festers there. Sometimes, a little voice taunts in the back of my mind. What conversation should I have had? What could I have done to direct them to a gentler path?

But I find no answers to it. And there's not a way to turn back the clock now. They grew into the adults we hated. Morphed into the anger we feared. When did it stop being a dreadful thing and entice them? Was it always there? I look for the signs in our memories but find nothing. They were, we were, normal kids.

It pains my heart like a vise twisting tighter and tighter. No one warns you about this. No one dares speak about the most insidious part of adulthood. And, I think about our parents, the ones who were cruel and calloused. Sometimes I wonder about the child they once were. Consider that I might have been friends with them too. Ponder what poison they drank to become a bad person. Why did their children had to drink it too?

I'm left to mourn friendships that died. Left to miss the innocence of our youth. I wish the world was not so complicated. I wish I did not have to bury them as they live. Alas, not everyone grows up to be a good person.