Death of Innocence

  Sometimes, I think about whether life has gone stale on me.
  I don't know (What is it that I don't know?) I don't know why sometimes, I think that it might be better if I just disappeared. Like a bubble that has burst, and the particles of my bubble-self is scattered in the wind. What if I really am a bubble in this world? Would anyone notice if I was gone?
  I wake up sometimes with the feeling that I don't want to get out of bed (clinomania, hmm?). This is one of the luxuries of youth, maybe. I can choose not to attend classes--I am not someone who works for my own living yet, whose pay would get docked if I did not show up for work. When I am in this state of mind, I stare at the dancing dust motes carried by the shafts of light that pierce my window. I wish I were a dust mote, I think to myself. I wish I were a dust mote, going where the wind blows it. Dust that has no responsibilities, no family, no siblings whose education I would  be responsible for when I am earning my own wages.
  There are a lot of luxuries in youth. I see it now. Now that I am nineteen, and I am finishing my undergraduate course soon, I see it. I do not know what this feeling is. Maybe I'm afraid of the precariousness of life. Maybe I am burdened by the tiny sadnesses gathering on the edges of my soul. Why am I writing at this time of night?
  One of the luxuries of youth is also the ability and opportunity to dream. I don't know why, but it's like my dreams that I have drawn in my mind's eye are disappearing, one by one. Disappearing like bubbles eventually do. I think about myself going to office, going home, eating, showering, sitting on a toilet and doing my business. I think about earning money to support myself, or a family, maybe. Having children. I think about those things, and my knees start to shake. This is the reality of life. The dreams of an innocent child aren't there any more. I don't know. It's 12:32 AM. I want to sleep, but my consciousness doesn't want me to just yet. The child in me is encouraging me to draw, to write a novel, to compose a song. Be a child again, my younger self urges me.
  I feel like my ability to dream has vanished. My dreams are like birds, flying, flying in the sky. As I
grow old, they are gunned down, one by one, until they fall down...down... until they meet with the ground in a rush of sadness and pain. Who is the one with the gun? It's myself, the inner me who has steadily been losing the hope to dream.
  Yes, I am sad. This is my younger self writing, who is begging to be let back to the green fields of her childhood.
  This is also the 19-year-old me, who is asking herself is these dreams are still of any use to her.
  On this day, on the 28th of September, 2015, thirty-eight minutes past midnight, the wounded birds are still on the ground, and my younger self is being relegated to one of the many dark rooms of my mind.
  It is sad.

*This is a post that is also posted on my private Tumblr. However, I have translated it from the Filipino I wrote it in into English for this blog. I suppose it's an exercise in translation for me, too.*