Childhood: Recovered

As a child, pillow and blanket forts were my thing. Any surface in the house that could prop up a pillow or be draped with a blanket was used at some point. I lived for these forts, building elaborate ones when time permitted or restarting every morning if the living room was needed in the evening. 

In grade school, I learned that pillow forts weren't cool. Sure, some kids made them, but those kids weren't part of the "in" crowd. I wanted to be, so I stopped talking about my forts. Not talking about them led to less enthusiasm about them, and I stopped building them altogether around the age of eight.

During puberty, I grew tall and lanky. Even though my self-esteem would encourage me to do what I wanted, I knew that I would never be able to fit in the forts I used to make. Yet, the repressed child in my heart still dreamed of what I used to spend my days doing. 

One day, by chance, my significant other made an offhanded joke about wanting to build a pillow fort. My heart lurched, and I took them up on the offer. Finally, years after they were deemed uncool, forts became the center of my world again.