There’s no memo. No soft piano in the background. No cinematic fade-out. One morning, you simply wake up, and the air feels heavier. The world has thickened around you, stiffened like wax cooling in a mould. Nothing catastrophic happened. No fall, no scare, no heart-to-heart moment. And yet, the leap you would have once taken without thinking? Now it requires a full internal risk assessment.
Yesterday, you were velocity in motion; leaping puddles, balancing on curbs, diving into conversations and sidewalks with the reckless trust of someone who believed gravity was optional. Today, you pause before stepping off a curb. You pause before everything. What used to be instinct is now a negotiation. Your knees bargain, your back files a complaint, and your inner voice; once a cheerleader; is now a corporate compliance officer.
You begin to notice the shift in little things. Like the way you no longer sit in a chair without checking its stability first. There was a time you’d laugh at the wobble, ride it like a cowboy taming a wild stool. Now you press down gently, suspicious as a detective. Or the way puddles used to be portals; an invitation to splash, to feel alive, to get a little muddy. Now, they’re slip hazards. Bacterial mysteries. Insurance claims waiting to happen.
It’s not that you’ve become boring. Just... deeply aware of your own fragility. You’ve become a mathematician of misfortune. A statistician of bone density. Joy is no longer spontaneous; it is forecast, costed, and subject to sudden cancellation due to risk. A quick dash across the street is no longer a burst of freedom. It’s a logistical challenge involving trajectory angles, braking distances, and whether or not the driver of the oncoming Honda looks like they’ve had enough coffee.
And no one tells you how sudden it is. You always imagined aging as erosion; a gentle weathering of edges, time like a tide pulling grains from your shoreline. But no. It’s a trapdoor. One moment you’re midair, arms outstretched, a god of small gravity-defying miracles; and the next, you’re counting the seconds until you hit the ground.
The cruellest part? You can’t even remember the last time you jumped without looking. You didn’t know it was the last time. There was no fanfare. No triumphant music. Just some random Tuesday where you vaulted over a bench or ran downhill too fast, and then... never again.
Somewhere, in the brittle archives of memory, there’s a version of you that still lingers; shins streaked with mud, wind stinging your teeth, charging through puddles without hesitation. You climbed trees without questioning the strength of the branches or the mercy of the ground. You laughed before thinking, danced without needing music, fell in love without checking for exits. You believed the world would catch you; or at least break you kindly.
Now you walk like a glass sculpture. You test every step. You flinch at unpredictability. You pray to the gods of traction and structural integrity. You’ve joined a quiet religion; the Church of What If. What if the brakes fail? What if the ladder slips? What if this flirtation ends in betrayal, or worse, paperwork?
Scepticism used to feel like a flaw. Now it feels like armour. You used to think cynics were just burnt; out romantics. Now you understand; they’re realists with better survival rates. The magic didn’t disappear; it was evicted, replaced by the cold, grey comfort of predictability.
And yet. Despite it all. Sometimes, in the hush between two thoughts, there’s a flicker. A muscle twitch. A strange, disobedient longing to run barefoot through wet grass. To spin in a parking lot at midnight. To leap without knowing or caring, where the landing might be. It comes without warning. Without logic. Just a whisper from some soft, forgotten part of you that remembers how it used to feel to be limitless.
Maybe aging isn’t the end of wonder. Maybe it’s just its rearrangement. The body learns caution. The mind learns restraint. But the soul still hums the old songs. Maybe magic isn’t gone; it’s just sleeping with one eye open. Maybe the ground will always be there, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still fly, even for a second.
And maybe, on the right day, with the right light, with a song playing that stirs the bones; you will jump again.
Not because you’re sure of the landing.
But because, just for a moment,
you forgot to be afraid.
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