Before We Lost Our Fairytales

🎶 So take me back to the days when I was younger... all this bullshit is overrated 🎶

Jun 15, 2025

A few days ago, I was on my way out when I saw a little girl playing outside. She couldn’t have been more than four or five. Her teddy bear was strapped to her back like a baby, tied with a scarf the same way our mothers used to carry us with wrappers that smelled like home, Passion powder, and afternoon naps.

She was bent over a tin can filled with sand, stirring it with the kind of focus you only see in kids who are lost in their world. I’m pretty sure in her mind, she was a mother making food for her family. She didn’t care who was watching and her face was serious, like what she was doing truly mattered.

I walked past her, barely breaking my pace, but something about that moment got lodged in my chest. I haven’t been able to forget her. That child. Her beautiful make-believe world and her very visible joy.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how the world used to feel. Or at least my world… it wasn’t perfect, easy, or even kind. But back then, it had magic. A raw, unexplainable feeling that didn’t have to come from having money or stability. It was just there… in the ordinary. You’d walk outside and see boys racing with slippers that were sizes too big, or flying nylon kites they made from broomsticks. You’d see little girls playing ten-ten with serious concentration like the fate of the world depended on their next step.

I remember we would find tadpoles swimming in muddy gutters and think they were baby fish. We would chase butterflies until we got tired. We didn’t need money to be happy. Half the time, we just needed the weekend, sun, sand, and friends. There was laughter in the air and even the hard days felt lighter because joy was still easy to find.

Oh, and there were the holiday seasons. Christmas Eve felt like heaven. You’d smell fried meat and curry and charcoal smoke at the same time, and somehow it made sense. Your mum would be in the kitchen, yelling at everyone. She’d shout at you for choosing to stay in the sitting room giggling and dancing to Boney M. and ABBA.

She would then hand you a hot piece of meat from the pile she was frying like a secret offering. You’d burn your tongue and she’d fan your mouth while warning you that she told you not to eat it yet. The food was always more than necessary, but somehow never too much. And the next morning, you’d wear your new clothes and show them off like you were the richest child in the world.

Funny enough, I’ve always said I wouldn’t go back to being a child. There’s something deeply frustrating and not nostalgic about growing up in a place surrounded by lack and poverty. Both of funds and the mind. But there was also something soft and safe about that time. Even when things weren’t great, I still had joy.

I might cry because I couldn’t get ice cream after church, but the next minute I could also be laughing again because my favorite cartoon was on. I could throw tantrums over puff puff and yam burgers today even though there was a possibility I would be sent home from school the next day. My world was small but it was whole. I believed things would always get better and I just didn’t have the weight of the world on my back.

I like to think the world has aged terribly. Not just in numbers or brokenness, but in color. Everything looks grey now. Everything is fast, heavy, and complicated. We’ve grown up. The questions have changed. We don’t ask where the sun goes at night anymore or smile during lightning because we think God is taking us a photograph. Now, we are asking if we will be successful or if we’re successful enough. Now, we are scared of lightning and when it rains, we no longer come out to play. Instead, we rot in bed. Either whiling away time, crying, or worrying. In fact, we worry whether it’s raining or there’s sunlight. We worry about our next job, our next step, our next version of becoming better.

As kids, we didn’t need reasons to believe in the fairytales. We let our imagination carry us. We believed the best parts of the story would come, no matter how bad things looked. But now? We tell ourselves we’re just being realistic, but are we? Really?

Because it seems we have replaced our fairytales with realism, cynicism, hustle, and strategy. These days, the prince has anxiety. The princess is in therapy. The kingdom is in debt. And the happy ending comes with terms and conditions.

Twenty-One & Beyond

Discussion about this post