I often hear my elders reminisce of their past, of what they would call the “simple days.” Although I am only a teenager, I curiously also find myself reminiscing my childhood. Sometimes, I reflect and comment on how odd it is for a person my age to wish to turn back the clocks of time.

But times were much simpler as a child. Life in high school has unknowingly brought along a handful of unwanted drama. Conversations I hear I the halls now usually involve marks and grades and juicy stories of betrayal and heartbreaks. As a child, conversations would be in the realm of fantasy and our realities were only as real as our imagination. When we take a stick and put a dandelion flower on the end, it was a wand. When the sink turned on by itself, there was a ghost.

During childhood, the best of the human spirit is captured. When we are young, we learned to share, to not socially exclude, to respect differences and to listen to our elders. Now in high school, many of these very virtues are shattered. As we grow up, we learn that perhaps we don’t need to include everyone. Perhaps in order to get a bigger piece of the pie, we should not share. And perhaps we do not have to listen to our elders; their experiences in life now seems so trivial and insignificant that it is not worth paying attention to.

Emotions run afire in high school. There are feelings of sadness, desperation, loneliness and isolation that we experience everyday. So many things are being asked of us. Our future beckons. Who do we want to be? How is it possible to stand out in this world? In such a big school, you can get lost in a sea of people, and you must find where you fit in. As a child, the only emotion I really felt was pure and essential happiness. I did not have a care in the world. For me, as long as I can enjoy the simple things such as reading a book while sitting in the warm sunlight or eating watermelon slices while laughing with my friends, I was happy.

As I grow up, I feel that I am growing as a person. I am learning and discovering things about myself. Yet, I lose the simple, carefree part of me. As cliché and melodramatic as this saying is, the flame of my childhood is extinguishing. I try to hold on, but it is a part of me that is fading everyday. Now it is a relic of the past, and the only thing I have left are memories.