We stopped living.

From small children, we are taught to give everything a heart beat. Everything is living and we all have potential of getting hurt, losing our step, and being nothing special when it came to death. You don’t realize that you are taught these things, but they are the steam coming off of your lips in a chilly morning. You don’t notice, but they’re so obvious.

Your favorite toy had a name, an opinion, and a personality. It taught you how to not be scared of the dark and to stand up for yourself when someone choose to tell you otherwise. You have the safety blanket that hid you from all the nightmares, monsters, and scary strangers.

When you fell, you fell hard. Bruises and bumps tormented your mother but never made you second guess doing it all over again. Jump off that porch, climb that tree, and bounce all over the room. You had every fear while having no fears at all. Life was simplified to bed time stories, pull-ups and trying to tie your shoe laces.

You still learned about death from hamsters, goldfish, and rabbits. You knew friendship by whoever sat next to you and stayed there during lunch time. You knew heartbreak when the girl you liked didn’t give you a valentine’s day card, or when your invisible friend stops coming over.

It’s the adults that mess everything up. We start expecting, and demanding things out of ourselves and others. We make things complex and complicated. We stop looking at things as a whole and start taking things for granted. We stopped living.