Somewhere between then and now my sparkly, light up sketchers turned into white air forces. Somewhere between then and now my pink unicorn bed sheets turned into white ones. Somewhere between then and now my puffy pink tutu dress turned into leggings and a sweatshirt. Somewhere between then and now I grew up.
I'm not sure if I knew that was going to be the last time I would take out my barbies to play on my front porch while my mom cooked dinner. I don't know if when my mom walked me and my siblings to the Narberth playground to play as a Friday afternoon surprise she knew she would never take those steps again. I used to daydream about being the age I am today, painting my face with mommy’s make up picturing what it would be like to be able to have my own and use it whenever I want when I get older but now when i think back on that i wish never started putting makeup on i the first place. Maybe it started with putting pink glittery lip gloss on but that harmless lip gloss changed into something much greater. It soon became a question of why are my lips not as pink as those girls or why are my lips smaller than hers. Those questions held so much more weight than one would think because that's when all the other questions of my little 7 year old self started thinking about. I should have been playing out with my siblings but I wasn't sure why my eyebrows looked like a boys or why when you look at my chin closely it looked like a golf ball on top of a frisbee while my friend's chin was defined in one straight line. Very very soon my questions just turned into insecurities and before I knew it I wasn't just my face. Why do my arms stick out like that? Why am I so much taller than everybody around me and why won't people stop talking about it? Why do my legs do that when I sit down in a chair? It was never just my imagination picking stuff out of me that needed to change. They started out with the way I have little bumps on my nose so I covered them up with foundation. Then my lashes were too short so I would curl them and put mascara on them. My lips are crusty. Oh ok i'll put loads of aquaphor on them while i sleep and then cover them up with pink lip oil in the morning. Oh. She said now I wear too much makeup and it looks cakey. Ok it's fine i'll just work all night to make my skin glowy and do “natural” makeup in the morning. Oh no! Now this boy said that I don't take care of myself and I don't care about what I look like. I'll go a little heavier on the makeup but still not too much so that she doesnt start calling me cake face again. That's when I start to remember putting on that pink glitter lip gloss. I don't want to get any older now. Of course I'm excited to drive, and go to college but I just can't stop thinking about how my life will never be anything like it used to be.
It tickles my brain a little bit to think about how I see the same girl that I used to play princess with passed out in someone's front yard. In 3rd grade I got in a fight with this one girl who used my bookmark instead of her own and it was the worst thing that happened to me that month. I would give so much to have a fight like that again or  honestly just to have any fight about opinions on frozen rather than be about my best friend kissing her boyfriend and lying about it to me. I would give everything to be able to go back but it's too late. I grew up too fast.