Neverland

What does Peter Pan do when he finally grows up?

I don't know if there's a canon answer to that. And Hooked provided a reasonably good and rather funny suggestion. But the question bothers me nonetheless.

My parents called me Peter Pan when I was young. The boy who didn't want to grow up. Lovingly teased with that, I was guided and goaded through the process of becoming a man. It was hard, hurtful, painful, and scary. And that's just what my parents went through.

Now though, after a year of living on my own, I am faced with the terrible question yet again. The question to which I still don't know the answer. What does Peter Pan do when he finally grows up? Because he did, and he doesn't know.

There is no Neverland for me. No place that will be unchanging and joyful more or less forever. That is a fact which I have known all my life and which I have rebelled against - not actively or consciously for the most part, but always I have rebelled against it.

Of course, this would never be called heathy. But who can claim to have grown up in only healthy ways? And my parents, certain teachers, the best coaches, and friends I only learned how to have as an adult all did their best to help me. In their own ways and by their own means, to lesser and greater degrees of success, and with lesser and greater amounts of my well-earned gratitude.

Some, Mrs. P. in particular, it genuinely pains me to not have had the awareness and courage to accept what you were giving. I'm sorry. It might not mean too much, but you'll be in the acknowledgements of my books some day. And I hope to give at least one to you.

Since now Peter Pan has grown up, and learned to think about these things.

I went away and got a degree in philosophy, my public school teachers and football coaches would probably like to know. Lived abroad and done things that make my friends think I'm bragging when I share a funny story. Never did learn how to read the room. And my spelling got better, for the most part.

Got a good, steady job, and have now written and published over 220 stories, essays, articles, and poems. I'm using my powers for good best I can, just like you all hoped.

And I did it by accident.

Recently, I came to a shocking, crushing, and downright offensive realization. I have grown up. I'm fucking twenty-seven years old, and that means, "congratulations, Peter Pan, you're an adult. Technically you have been for nine years so far, but good on you for catching on."

Likely many of my readers will scoff good naturedly at my above dramatic declaration. And rightly so, twenty-seven only feels old to twenty-seven. Rightly so, some of my readers have a multiple of two on me. The crisis I feel now will likely pale in comparison to those to come.

However, I stress to you the importance of my family's reference to Peter Pan. I never wanted to grow up and on a deeply fundamental level I believed that it would never happen. In my darkest moments, thankfully fading into the increasingly distant path, I expected that to mean death. Not at my own hand, but rather in a general sense because of an axiom I didn't realize my mind was working on.

For reasons I'll probably never understand completely, I had never fully grasped the awesome (classical definition) weight of growing up. I tried to explain it to a friend as loneliness, but that didn't quite work. I could not convey the depth of my existential isolation. And still I cannot give it words, even if I were to attempt it in verse. Which I find rather annoying.

Time will pass and most critically has passed. I am not the same person I was even a year ago, I've grown and changed physically and emotionally. That continues to scare me, but even more so because I am consumed by a crushing awareness of permanence. Nothing done can be undone. Time moves forward. Things change, age, and die.

And I'm scared.

Peter Pan grew up and doesn't know what to do. He is frightened by an awareness that is relatively new to him, living in a world of people who seem not to get it. He has a job, has friends, is dating (holy crap, right?), is considering graduate studies, is learning skills, creating art, travelling, and always trying.

Peter Pan grew up by accident, without meaning for it to happen, and without ever really believing it could happen. He is now aware, in a way that he has never been before, of the fact of that impermanence. Things that once consumed all of his mind have faded. The pain isn't gone, isn't necessarily lessened, but is softened.

The joys that once enthralled him are lost to him. But sometimes able to be recalled. He smells things and remembers kind and happy times. The boy he was could never have believed it. The world continues to be dark and cruel, it continues to hurt for pain's own sake and drive itself towards ruin for want of effort to change. He still hates the world. But the hatred in his core for himself is lessened.

It is softer, like the memories of sorrows past. A saying I can finally claim to properly understand. The memory of a cut when a scar is noticed. Or a run of goosebumps at a creaky floorboard at night. A rush of disquiet that does not quite approach fear, like a sign along a road noticed on a foggy night. "Caution."

Where once it would have read "DANGER!"

Yet another thing I've always struggled to explain. The spoken word is not my art form, and conversation almost a kind of fencing match. Though I recognize in my new-found maturity that combat is a poor lens through which to see simple conversation.

Nevertheless, a card laid is a card played. In cribbage and in life.

Despite centuries of effort by various insane and interesting persons, there is no such thing as timelessness. There is no such thing as immortality. There is no such thing as a save point. Every day is lived once. Every sight seen exactly one time. Every moment in life unique in every possible way. And that terrifies me.

My dad asked me recently (hi dad hope you're not reading this far from tissue. Also sorry) what I live for. It was part of an argument, a situation I find myself desperate to avoid and yet constantly instigating, so I don't remember exactly the context. But I told him that I lived to live. And that's not far from the truth.

Life is pretty awful. So much of it is spent in an unappetizing blend of monotony and misery. Pain, war, being called American, disease, famine, people saying less when they mean fewer, France, all of it set to drive a man to melancholic distraction. All without mentioning the fact that our only truest companion in our singular journey through the cosmos is ourselves. And he and I don't get along.

But... how do I put this so that I get to still be right... I genuinely sat at my desk for five minutes and couldn't do it. I was wrong. Things get better. Life sucks and then you die is still objectively true, but as my dad always says, "and also misleading."

Please, reader, note that I admit he was right. But I'm doing so with a pout.

So again. What does Peter Pan do when he finally grows up? Because he has, and he doesn't know. And he's scared.

He doesn't know how to handle a world that might actually turn out ok in the end. He doesn't know what to do with the fact that he has come to accept both why he hated himself and that it was motivated by fear. He doesn't know how to express himself, but he tries.

What does Peter Pan do when he finally grows up? When he realizes his parents are mortal, and his sibling is no longer a child? When he looks down the stretch of eternity and realizes that he can see the end. It's far away, but it's there and only getting closer. What does he do when he is still scared of change, but knows that everyone he loves will eventually be gone?

I will often joke, or say in petulance, that I know I'm not special. My dad always made a point of telling me. Because I'm his child, and in some ways still very childlike, I accepted that with bad grace and rarely give my dad his due credit. Even as a boy I knew what he meant, because he explained it to me. And I should be better.

Dad was trying to tell me that I wasn't alone. That everyone on Earth had the same insecurities, fears, paranoias, ect. as me. Because I felt desperately alone in my pain and could not understand why. It was a valuable lesson that he taught me, sometimes in anger at my petulant tantrums, and I am incredibly grateful he loved me enough to put in that effort.

Still, though. I don't think he was right. Because I am unique, same as him, same as you, reader. I am one hundred percent unique just like every other thing that has ever existed. Not in the ways I thought when I was a child, but still completely unlike anyone else.

Because there are no two versions of anything. Let alone something as complex as a human mind. The thinking animal, the spec in the eye of creation aware of itself enough to be disappointed with its lot. Or thrilled by it. Or a combination of emotions related to life, the universe, and everything that no one word can possibly describe it.

After all these years, I know what I'm afraid of. And to know a thing is to name a thing. I name it the Fear of Singularity. No I haven't looked up if this has a real name and I'm not going to. Nya. (see footnote)

To know a thing is to be able to no longer fear it.

What does Peter Pan do when he finally grows up? He mourns the fact. To be Peter Pan, in the metaphorical sense, is to lose your childhood the way others lose a loved one. A place cherished in heart because we know deep down that it has to end. For me, I hoped it would be happier. And I think that was the last thing in my way.

People love to tell me to "just let it go. You're holding on. Let it go." on repeat as though their vocal chords have been replaced by a very annoying and broken record. I could never explain to them that I was not actively holding on, that I could not let go because they were not in my hand. I didn't know what was blocking me, and I didn't know how to 'let it go.'

Que anger, fights, rage, resentment, regret, anxiety, fear, egg shells.

It was the sense of unfairness. The sense of entitlement to my childhood and a certain kind of childhood. One of adventure and whimsy. One that I made choices, every single day, to not participate in because it was not for me. Because I didn't fit in, I didn't get along, I was an outcast in the mask normalcy and could not understand why no one understood.

I made mistakes. I wasted years. Years and years. But I also had adventures. I went to strange new places, saw and did incredible things, I have stories of my youth that make people jealous. And I have stories that make people worried. My childhood was a good time. In general it treated me well, and where it didn't 'little man' as he was called, would be thrilled to know it actually did get better. The horrors end. New ones take their place, but like everything, they're finite.

What does Peter Pan do when he finally grows up? He cries. And he lays the past to rest. If he can.

(This is the footnote) Autophobia: While usually referring to fear of being alone, it can sometimes relate to fear of oneself — including fear of one’s own potential, freedom, or mind.