An Open Letter To My Inner Child: Let’s Stay Innocent
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“Curiosity is the most powerful driving force in the universe because it can overcome the two greatest braking forces in the universe: Reason and Fear.” ~ Walter Moers, The City of Dreaming Books
I believe that curiosity is one of the most childish characteristics a human can possess. It is innocent and pure, and it doesn’t mean any harm.
It is just curious for its own sake, out of its own childish little will. It is perfect in itself and explores and learns not for any kind of benefit but just for the pure and innocent joy of learning, venturing and growing.
Sometimes I wish that I would have taken more time to be curious instead of just letting life happen to me.
I wish I had done this earlier, before I had any scars, any hair that grew in strange places and grossed me out, before I had seen any of the images that sometimes haunt me late at night; certainly before I knew the concepts of guilt or shame; before my trust in myself or in another being had ever been broken.
I have always wanted to explore fully, to give it all I had. So I did, and despite the purity of my trying, the hope, trust and all I put in it, it went wrong. All I wanted was to be myself.
I longed so deeply to be loved for it; to be loved for who I was and not for something I do or don’t do, and certainly not for the fleshy little well between my legs that, a long long time ago, liked to be touched (but only sometimes, by a select few, maybe only by myself or the idea of someone).
I wish I had taken more time with my body before I gave it to others to play with in exchange for all the love I wished for. I wish I had known more and protected it better.
I wish the world hadn’t flooded all its sex and liberty and openness upon me and I had had the time to play, to explore, to let the wind stroke my bare legs before anyone ever touched them in a way that implied, that wanted, that held on too tight.
This is not the way it went, though, and the little girl in me, the one with the curly springy hair and the big brown eyes, got terribly scared.
I am so sorry, little one, that I haven’t taken care of you better. I hope you’ll forgive me one day and learn to trust again. If you like, we can pretend that none of this ever happened, because if it scared you, then something was wrong and should not have been in the first place.
Let us just sit here and look, not touch. Just see the blue little veins underneath this skin and think how sensitive it can be.
Can we take off our clothes without fear of touch, or looks, or anything that has to be sexual? Just lay our head back and shake it left and right so the long, fluffy curls stroke the bare back?
Let us touch our fingertips together and feel their warmth, the little pulse and movement in them until it gets too much. Our hands are rough and the bare soles of our feet are callused. Fresh air dries the tears on our face and their traces feel cool on our cheeks.
Can we look at the lines on our hands, can we just be and be and be, like our heartbeat? Just be and be, and nothing ever has to happen? No one has to touch us if we don’t want to. Maybe we will one day, and be confused.
Maybe nothing is wrong with touching this body until it shivers and contracts, but for now, if we do, it is still scary and there is guilt, and shame, and bad feelings to it but maybe we can figure this one out too one day, not today.
No one has to look at us like this if you, little girl, are scared that they will crave us. We can paint our skin in all the colors the sky knows. We can run around and dance naked and only the sun, the moon, the wind and the stars will know, and if you get scared, we’ll hide in a field from them.
We can feel, and be sensual with this body, and there doesn’t need to be sex. And we can be different from anyone we know or anything we have seen or read. We don’t ever have to like sex if we don’t want to.
Maybe one day we’ll try and see it’s not for us and maybe, who knows, it will be okay, but it is such a long way off and if there’s steps we don’t want to take, then we don’t have to. It does not mean we’re not loveable.
We are more than this peculiar little cave between our legs, more colorful than physical lust.
We can be childish and curious, and enjoy the sensation of our hair stroking our back or the balance in a handstand more than we’ll ever like sex. We can make funny shapes with our body and open up and dance and move and make strange noises and run without our clothes on and whatever it is we want or don’t want.
If anyone judges us or wants us to do differently, they are wrong, little girl, and we will not take their hand.
Let us believe that someone will love us for exactly that: for all the crazy colors of our world and the wheat stroking our skins when we run in a field and dancing naked under the stars and for not wanting sex but wanting to paint our skin instead. Or decorate our hair and body with fallen leaves and seashells and sand and all the things that feel different on our skin; for being childish, and curious, and scared too, because of our sensitivity and all the intensity that life bestows on us.
And maybe, one day, that person may touch us, with their words and their thoughts and their eyes and maybe even a fingertip or the warm rough skin of their palm, a lip, a breath, the tip of their nose, their eyelash and the little drops of water bouncing off their hair when it’s wet.
And maybe, if we feel like it, we’ll lick the salt of their skin and curve our hands around their cheeks to make a little nest for it, trace their spine with a tiptoe or just tickle their ears with our nervous, warm, childish laughter.
Maybe, one day, but for now all we ever have to do is be ourselves, be childish, explore, learn and grow.
Okay, little girl?
*****
Miriam Mindt is a circus artist, a hand-balancer in the making, a wanderer, traveller and curious girl who never wants to grow up because she believes that the world is much more beautiful through silly, childish eyes that don’t take everything so seriously. She drinks decaffeinated coffee for the taste of it, trains hard for the joy of it, and prefers holding hands to sex a lot of the time because she is badass like that. What she likes most is to inspire and make people smile, truly, with their entire face and not just the lips!
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