"I so long for my past; for that young, blond Corey who was an innocent child. That is what I want, but can never get back. It is gone forever... Or is it?" (from the thought Angels)

It's hard to believe that as young as ten, I felt too old and longed to be younger. At twelve, when I "discovered" an interest in boys, I desperately needed to be younger. By the time I was fifteen, I had spent countless days crying my eyes out over what seemed like a hopelessly lost childhood. I longed for the simplicity I saw in my past. I longed for the days before attractions, hormones, and all those completely mixed up emotions. I know I've probably never used the "p words" here, as I couldn't stand to hear or even think about them for years. Puberty was an incredibly long and drawn out trauma for me (for a glimps of how I felt, see the newly posted thought Childhood and Sex). And, although you can't tell that much in my thoughts, by sixteen I was completely insane (see the newly posted thought Temporary Insanity). Well, by that summer anyway. My voice didn't start changing until I was fifteen and I swear sometimes it still feels unfinished. And, aside from physical changes that I'm still too uncomfortable with (especially the hair), my hormones and emotions were driving me crazy. The other "p word" is pimples. Now, I know that many teenagers had it much worse than I, but the occasional zits didn't' help matters. Still, aside from appearance and emotional control, what I constantly longed most for was innocence.

I was convinced that puberty had robbed me of my innocence by making me aware of sexuality. Before twelve, I didn't really care too much about my appearance. That changed, but so did many things. I felt an awareness that I couldn't quite fully grasp. In 1999, I wrote To Be And To Have and other thoughts where I tried to explain my attraction to boys as a desire to be more like them. "I'm attracted to boys because I want to be them and I want to be them because I'm attracted to them." If I couldn't be innocent, why not find a boy who was. Yet, looking back now, I don't think I really should have been so emotionally distraught. I don't think I really had truly lost that innocence that I desperately sought.

Reading the thought The Myth of Innocence, I can feel the bitterness I felt once I finally accepted Joey's persistence that boys were not innocent and I had nothing I could have lost except a child's face and naivety about the world and myself. "The time spent craving and yearning for my childhood past was in vain (vain as in vanity). We can't make ourselves "innocent again' because we never were." In a way, I went through a whole new grieving process, but for the loss of an idea. Yet, looking over my old thoughts, I see things differently yet again (see Pausing to Reflect). The essence of what I longed for was still within me and, at least on some level, I knew it. In my original "about me" page from 1998, I wrote, "Don't send me any descriptions or links to descriptions of activities you know I shouldn't read and don't send me pictures of things I shouldn't see." I tried to shelter myself from anything worse than what I had already seen in my net searches for the words "pics" and "boys". My thoughts reflected the idealistic way I saw the world. While I certainly didn't think of myself as innocent at the time, being more cynical now, the way I used to see the world, the simple things that made me happy, my unending faith in God's love, and even my belief in innocence itself was almost "child-like".

I wouldn't just go to the beach to relax. I was also trying to get a tan. Along with lightening my hair, sunburning your face actually removes and prevents zits (for a while). Though, Joey was upset with the idea and has tried to keep my out of the sun these past years, so that I won't wrinkle up (since he'll have to live with me). The point is that I tried to make myself more like the boys I was attracted to. I dressed in fluorescent green and shorts. Sometimes I even tried to act like the playful boys I had crushes on. In a thought written on August 20th, 2002 that I never put up on my site (because I was too critical of myself), I wrote, "I would see a boy and so often become overwhelmed with emotions that I could hardly breathe. I wanted to be with him, but my fears and doubts told me I wasn't good enough. I'd have to be as wonderfully perfect as I envisioned him to be before I could be with him. And, if I were like him, it wouldn't hurt so much to be around him." In that thought, where I blamed myself for making people care too much about me online, I felt that, since I never was innocent, I must have made myself innocent or at least tried to online. After all, people thought I had a "wonderful childlike innocence" and was "sweet". My conclusion was that I was simply naive. As I put it, "Sure, being naive seems so innocent, but if someone is really that naive, he can hurt people greatly without even realizing why or how." Of course, in the next thought from that day, Don't Help Me With A Knife (which did make it online), I came down hard on people like Tim and others for falling for me. I was just upset because I felt like bait and that it was my fault because (in order to like myself) I had made myself into someone I (and others) would be attracted to. Still, I may have tried to shelter my mind and change my appearance, but that's not why I look back on myself at fifteen and sixteen and see myself as still somewhat innocent. It's because of the wonder I felt. I wrote about all the wonder inside me. In thoughts like The Meaning Of Life (If You're Sitting On A Roof), Sunlight, or In A Moment, I still felt a wonder for life. Over time, circumstances seemed to take that from me. I could blame it on experience. I loved and lost, hurt others and was hurt myself, loved again, my hormones slowly came under control, and I learned a great deal about the world. However, I don't believe this particular "loss of innocence" is permanent. Joey was never innocent and he's remained rational (yet witty) throughout his teen years, so it may not simply be that I "grew up." Joey still insists that I'm quite naive in much of my thinking. Who knows, I may look back on this time period and think what a childish idea this was for a 100th thought. Then again, I may find that wonder again. Given how much I've changed over these past five years, it's unrealistic to think that I won't continue to change. In fact, I was told twice recently that I've grown (which is possible). While my naivety may be fading in degrees, I can still retain some innocence as long as I remember that feeling of wonder that I once felt. And, somewhere inside, I feel it coming back. At least I know it's still there. And, don't worry. I still have plenty of thoughts left to write.