The Part of Me That Refuses to Grow

There’s a part of me that refuses to grow.
Not immaturity. Not childish behavior.

Something else.

My mind, my energy, my desires—
they still move like I’m not even twenty.
And then I look in the mirror,
and it tells a different story.

Every morning I tell myself
I should be climbing mountains.
I should be finding people who think like me
and starting something—
a rebellion, a movement, anything that makes sense of this world.

I should be gathering people,
sharing recipes, tricks, ways to live better
with what we actually have.

But I don’t.

I stay in bed,
thinking about all the things I should be doing.

And I remember—
there was a spark.

Back when the internet first opened up,
I could talk to anyone in the world.
I had friends everywhere.

We talked about everything—
how they lived, what they did,
what the weather felt like where they were.

And they always thought I was younger.
Way younger.
Some of them worried about me.

I reassured them.
I told them I was old enough,
smart enough,
strong enough to hold my own in any conversation.

I gave advice
like I had lived ten lives already.

And maybe I hadn’t—
but I did it anyway.

I spent time with the outcasts.
The ones being bullied before I even understood the word.
The ones who wanted out so badly
it hurt to read them.

So I stayed.
I listened.
I told them pieces of my story
just so they wouldn’t feel alone.

That mattered to me.

Long before all of this,
I used to imagine something like an iPhone—
everything in the palm of my hand.
Music, books, conversations, the world.

I didn’t know how it would work.
I just knew it should exist.

And when it finally did,
it felt… incomplete.

Like it could have been more.

But that’s what happens
when you wait too long for something—
you expect everything at once.

And technology doesn’t work like that.
It moves on profit, not wonder.
On strategy, not imagination.

It has to sell.
It has to grow.
It has to keep people waiting for the next version
of something that was never finished to begin with.

And still, I think—
it shouldn’t be this hard.

It should be innovation, not extraction.
Creation, not negotiation.

Some people still don’t understand
how they can see their great-grandchildren on a screen.
Yesterday they were lighting candles to see in the dark.

And now everything is instant—
but somehow, less alive.

It is desperation disguised as profit.

We learned how to negotiate our lives
through money,
through “free,”
through desperation disguised as progress.

We should have kept that younger mind.
The playful one.

We should have built things together
just because we could.
Shared them freely.
Created without turning everything into a transaction.

But that’s not the world we built.

And still—
there’s a part of me that refuses to grow.

My mind remembers that girl
who spent hours creating what she didn’t have.

I didn’t get to follow a path in technology.
I watched others do it—
some started with good intentions,

and somewhere along the way,
they were swallowed by money.

“Don’t grow up, it’s a trap.”

Maybe it is.

But keeping that child alive—
that’s something else entirely.

A child plays.
A child imagines.
A child starts over without shame.

Nothing is permanent.
Nothing is fixed.
Everything can be rebuilt.

You’re allowed to change.
To go back.
To try again with open hands
instead of guarded ones.

That part of me—
the one that refuses to grow—

might be the only part
that still knows how to live.

So maybe the point isn’t to grow up completely.

Maybe the point
is to remember what we lost
and dare to use it again.

Try it.

We could still make this a better place—
if we actually wanted to.