Peter Pan Syndrome

For all my life I have suffered from what I call 'peter pan syndrome'.
An immense fear of growing up.
I have tried to cling on to my fleeting childhood through keeping my body in a child-like form.
My eating disorder has been my access to neverland, to stay child-like, to stay safe.
I sometimes wonder whether my eating disorder triggered this, as it entered my life at the age of 8.
It stole my childhood, and ironically it has been my way of holding on to a lost childhood and to regain it.
I do not know why growing up scares me.
In recent years this fear has grown. Recovery has forced my body to evolve, to change, to grow.
I look in the mirror now and see a woman.
I see curves. I see breasts. I see hips.
I used to see a young girl, scared of the world. I now see a young girl trapped in a womans body.
I spend my time trying to embrace my new womanhood and face this fear.

Neverland to me has always been real. In a way that its a place to escape and run away from the world. Thats what Peter did, and if you read the book properly you will notice it is tainted and he is actually trapped there in his youth. The wonderful experiences of growing up are stolen from him. He is trapped in time, and the ticking clock of the crocodile haunts him as well as Hook.

People who know me, know that I love anything magical. Its part of my being. Who I am.
But its sort of a curse.
I am growing up. I have a child. A fiance. A home. A job.
'Will they send me to school?'
'Yes'.
'And then to an office?'
'Yes'
'Someday I will be a man. You can't make me a man and grow up'.

So what is it about growing up?
All these things I have longed for. Now they are here, I am scared.
And I can't run away with my ed anymore. I am no longer a little girl. On the contrary, I have a little boy.
I get angry at my body, as if it is the reason I am now grown up.
But its the inevitability of time.
Time is chasing all of us.

So yes, I suffer from peter pan syndrome.
I am stuck at a cross roads of wanting to grow up and wanting to stay young.
I can't claim back them lost years of childhood. Thats the hard truth.
But I can breath the new experiences that await me. To be excited for them and everything they bring.
I need to grow up.
I need to live my life rather then get myself stuck in a time-warp.
As I always say, to live will be an awfully big adventure.

So let the adventure begin. 
Goodbye to that scared child within me. I can't protect her anymore. 

xxx