A kid for a minute.

3:21

“I just want to be a kid for a minute,” she said, already halfway into her second Negroni.

That’s what everyone wants. We spend most of our lives running, growing, chasing success and covering responsibilities, paying for needs that half the time weren’t even ours to begin with.

Everyone’s sprinting somewhere.

But the strange thing is that when people meet each other, we suddenly act like none of that is happening.

We put the masks back on — successful, stable, in control.

Like vulnerability is something that exists somewhere out there in the world — in books, in therapy rooms, in other people’s lives.

Just not in us.

She’s old. Old enough to know exactly where her pain comes from.

You can see it on her skin.Cigarettes, late nights, dehydration — a life that didn’t always slow down when it should have. The body keeps records. It always does.

But somehow her soul didn’t sign the same contract.

Inside, she’s still about seven years old.

Pure, untouched by the negotiations life forces on the rest of us.

Nothing bitter ever reached that part of her.

Life managed to affect her only externally; inside, the lights are still on.

Inside, a child is still sitting there, curious about the world, not yet convinced that things are supposed to hurt. Maybe that’s her real secret.

She survived by keeping one small room inside her that the world never managed to enter.

“You are beautiful,” I told her.

And I stayed fully in front of her when I said it.

She looked uncomfortable for a moment.

Not offended. Just surprised.

Her hands didn’t know where to go — trying to fix her hair and hold the Negroni at the same time.

The small chaos people fall into when they’re not used to being seen.

I didn’t move. I stayed right there.

Sometimes people spend their whole lives protecting that little room inside them...and the least you can do, when you finally notice it,is stand still long enough for them to know you saw it.

“I know,” she said.

She didn’t rush it. She took her time first, like someone calmly accepting a truth she had managed to keep safe for a long time.

Then she lifted the glass slightly.

“I’m a beautiful kid,” she added, almost smiling, just before the cheers.

Not sarcastic, not ironic — just simple.

The way children say things that are obvious to them and for a moment, she looked exactly like what she said she wanted to be.

A kid.