***Originally posted to Gist App by @labellajourneys / Bella L.

( Shout out to Melissa Belanger for the photo via unsplash )

What if the sky was green and the grass was blue? What if the world rotated slower, leaving us with longer days and longer years, and we literally had more time in a day? What if every time you stepped away from a room, it disappeared, only to reappear when you found it once again?

I like asking questions. By nature, I have always been terribly curious. I learned early on to hide my questions and curiosity because the adults around me did not welcome them.

Asking questions at church was met with anger or passive-aggressive answers that implied I was trying to pick at the faith. Asking for help when I realized my parents were going through something hard ended up turning my entire world into more conflict and chaos. Asking questions was hardly ever met with equal curiosity.

When I learned about electricity in school, and then started learning about experiments and how to test a hypothesis, I started secretly testing my own. Some were fine… others, involving electricity and testing outlets, weren’t the best for an elementary student to be messing around with unsupervised.

Soon, my younger siblings began asking questions about all kinds of things. To avoid strife, I started coming up with answers. Sometimes, I would find the accurate answer. Other times, I would make them up.

When my siblings asked me at lunch one day where babies came from, 10- or 11-year-old me started sharing a story about how everyone came from different foods.

One of them was a blueberry that Mom baked into a pie. While all the other blueberries burst in the oven, one stayed intact. When Mom swallowed the blueberry whole, it made its way to her stomach and started to grow. It grew and grew, and the bigger it got, the less blue it became.

Soon, Mom went to the hospital to get checked out, where the doctors said, “OH! That baby is no longer the size of a blueberry! It is time for them to come out!”

I think finding answers is where I learned to find fun in being a storyteller. I started writing more and more, and I loved the writing teachers I had who continued to foster that growth and mischievous spirit within me.

To this day, I love telling stories. I love being challenged through my writing. I love having a creative niche where I can speak wonder, whimsy, and emotion to both myself and an audience.

My inner child loves to play, and this was the healthiest way I knew how: with scribbles and scratches in my journals about life, faith, and storytelling.

Where do you allow your inner child to play?

Where do you allow your imagination to roam free?

Let’s discuss in the comments.