My inner wild child

For some time I’ve wondered where my inner child has gone.  She stayed with me way beyond the time most adults have forgotten what it is like to delight in kids toys (especially the wind up ones that send the dog mad), play hide and seek with the cat, go out to a public field with headphones on and have one person rave in the middle of it., build a snowman for the sheer delight of knocking it down again and run through ankle-deep multi autumn coloured leaves in the fall.    She kept me abreast of current music trends and fashion styles, persuaded me to ride a motor bike and go back to university as a mature student, taught me that wearing a mini skirt and stilettos over the age of 30 is not a bad thing.  She never tired of watching fireworks, blowing bubbles or marvelling at rainbows.    She was wild, fun, led me astray from the path of respectability and I loved her to bits.  Then little by little she faded away, her voice became a whisper easily overridden by sensibility, her energy and zest for fun suffocated by work and tiredness and her joy and delight dulled by loss and tragedy.   Eventually she upped sticks, left me to my routine enmeshed life and we lost touch.    What I didn’t realise at the time was that her mischievousness, appetite for adventure and youthful presence enhanced my life and stopped me from becoming mentally ‘old’.     Then just as I thought I’d never write my name with a sparkler again or blow a multitude of bubbles in the summer breeze and run around like an idiot trying  to catch them, she came back.  I think it might have been the aquamarine stilettos that caught her interest or the two nights of partying in them that gave her hope that I was not a lost cause.   Whatever the reason we are together again and she is now trying to persuade me to get my nose pierced and dye my hair a candyfloss pink.   This time I don’t intend to ever  let her go.