[ElephantinePigiferous]

and no im not talking about sex.
when did you realize life is not a stroll around the park? how old were you?

growing up i never understood why people wanted to go back to their childhood again.i i just thought life would be way cooler once i grew up. always fancied having a job,a girlfriend,a car...
now, im barely in college and im thinking of how easy it was as a kid and how much i'd give to go back.
sure i wondered about stuff when i was younger but it never occurred to me that i would be in the middle of all of it. i've known how the world works for quite some time now,but i never knew people change so much over time.it hit me like a bomb today,when i caught up with some old friends.they're so different now.
every freaking thing is changing.nothing seems to be stable.can't rely on anything .

 

[Cable]

The day I lose all hope in love.

Lets say it's anywhere from 5 minutes to 70+ years from now.

 

[Juan M]

When i accidentally ate my underwear.

 

[refugee]

When I came out of my mother's womb.

 

[Marimeli]

Sorry, but it was when I first had sex. It was such a terrible and disillusioning experience the first time and I was not ready for the emotional consequences of it on me or my family.

It's all 180 from that now, but it was 3 years before I had sex again after that, and I wished I could just go back, at the time. Now, I wouldn't undo it because I love who I turned out to be and I think that not having that experience would make me different today.

 

[DragonflyBlue]

i dont know, did i ever lose it?

maybe i did, i know too many of the awful things in this world but i try my best to stay optimistic even though my mom is a cynic and i fear sometimes i may be catching some of it.

when i was little though i didn't want to grow up, i never did want to. time did change me overtime but not completely, and i am still more of a kid at heart than i should be perhaps, but its me.

does simply knowing a lot mean you have lost your innocence? is it in what you do that makes you lose your innocence. i personally think that its in how you think and feel about the world. i guess some people would say i am naive, which imo is innocence so maybe i am still innocent a bit at least?

i don't remember any particular age when i realized that life wasn't a bed of roses, it just gradually came to me over years, but quite late, it was perhaps in my late teens even so actually recently. my mom would tell me many things about people, how a lot of them are selfish and how they hurt others. she of course would tell me that she knows not everyone is like that, but the impression she gives me is that she thinks most people are like that and that the people who aren't are too hard to find. i don't agree even now, even after having seen much of it myself, i refuse to think the world is such an ugly place as i have been told. its bad but there are still some good in it.

i may have kept a bit of innocence, its been the past couple of years that i have been losing more and more of my innocence through circumstance.

or maybe i haven't? what is innocence? is innocence not knowing about evil, or is it knowing about evil but believing in good despite what everyone says?

 

[robespierre]

After a guy I was in love with, broke up with me.
I wasn't traumatized but it made me realize that I'm not a princess, this ain't a fairy tale...and I was a dreamer before he went and let me down (omg taylor swift lyrics, i apologize hehe).
But yea, I sort of am grateful for that I guess because now I know that life is not guaranteed to turn out the way I wish/plan it to. And I'm not as naive.

However, I am still extremely optimistic

 

[7rr7s]

I lost it the day I found out my Father was having an affair. I was around 8 years old. Ever since then I've never dealt too good with change, or trusting people for that matter. But fuck it, I think it probably made me a stronger person, at least I hope it did.

 

[krentz]

I've always known that life wasn't always easy. But the abstract yet perceptible innocence I know you're talking about... I think a lot of it left me when I dropped out of University, as it was the first time in my life I had really failed at anything. Then again, when I faced such difficulties finding work, and even after finding employment, I found the whole thing to be much less... ideal than I had imagined. So, late teens to early twenties. I'm still in the latter bracket, mind. And I've always said the day I let it all fritter away is the day I've lost in the battle for my soul. I'm too stubborn to give up so easily, misguided a battle as it may be.

i've known how the world works for quite some time now,but i never knew people change so much over time.it hit me like a bomb today,when i caught up with some old friends.they're so different now.
every freaking thing is changing.nothing seems to be stable.can't rely on anything .

As for this, I realised this when I was no older than eight or nine, and it's something I've been struggling with ever since. I feel you there, truly. It's also perhaps one of the reasons that for all I have changed, I don't feel I'm that different. Most people who know me agree, too, so it's not just me. I raise you this, possibly my favourite poem:

Into My Own
by Robert Frost
---

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not be withheld but that some day
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e’er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.

They would not find me changed from him they knew—
Only more sure of all I thought was true.

 

[chwoey]

I got in a car accident when I was 8 years old. Though no one was hurt, it was very traumatic for me. I ended up getting post-traumatic stress disorder that affected me for the next 3 years.

My ideas of reality were turned upside down after that point.

We were rear-ended by a transport truck and my mom had said, "that asshole is on our tail", so I turned around in my seat and witnessed the truck smash into the back of our car.. I think that is the reason it affected me so badly.

 

[IAmOrangeToday]

throughout Primary school, when I was bullied for the first time a bit but more crucially when I realised how randomly some people are disallowed by everyone else.

 

[crossingguard]

In my case, innocence goes hand-in-hand with being naive. It's been more of learning experience for me, rather than suddenly realising that the world isn't a Utopia. I've always known that the world is weird and screwed up, but I feel like I just take that information and use it to personally grow, whether it's along the lines of, "Oh, I know not to act this way," or, "People are stupid, so I should better myself to keep from becoming like those who do make the world a darker place." There was no moment that I can say, "I wish I could go back to before This," partly because I don't really live in the past. I don't want to go back and redo things. I take experiences and use them to learn more about myself and the world.

I felt kind of T-ish while writing that, although that could just be showcasing that I still have a lot to learn about personality types. xD Maybe it's just the fact that everyone else seems to have a Moment that makes me feel different and I tried analysing what that difference was.

 

[krentz]

I felt kind of T-ish while writing that, although that could just be showcasing that I still have a lot to learn about personality types. xD Maybe it's just the fact that everyone else seems to have a Moment that makes me feel different and I tried analysing what that difference was.

I don't think that anyone really has a single defining 'moment'. It's difficult to call as well because our brains develop so much as we age when we're younger. I think it was more about noteworthy events. One of them was likely when my mother told me she was having an affair - that'd have been at around 13. Then my dad found out. Things got pretty shit for years after that. In fact, in my mid-teens the whole situation was just unbearable. However... the exponential leaps in perspective I gained around age 20 can't be understated. I was never lacking for awareness or imagination, despite my sheltered existence. Just... it's really hard to describe.

 

[Lorem Ipsum]

Though my childhood was not perfect, I was a person who saw the good in others and the world. But, the past few years have been tough as I have struggled with the deaths of the three closest people in my life. For awhile, I was down and angry at the world. I felt as if I had been a fool Pollyanna who was finally seeing life as it is. Still, there was this light in me, this whisper of softness, that could not be erased...

"In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."
~Albert Camus

 

[EyeEnEffPee]

When I was 17, I was going out with a girl who told me about some of the abuse she endured from her father. This was hardcore broken bones, rape, being pimped out for drugs abuse. I was never the same after that.... I remember being alone in my room thinking about it, crying my eyes out.

 

[crossingguard]

I don't think that anyone really has a single defining 'moment'. It's difficult to call as well because our brains develop so much as we age when we're younger. I think it was more about noteworthy events.

See, there wasn't any one event for me. No moment, no one event, like you had. There have been chains of events that ended up shaping me (quite a while after they happened and I reflected on them), but because of that, I can't really find When I lost innocence. I think that's why I perceive it and process it differently than most of the others here. Any specific events that I remember having a big affect on me were after any innocence was chipping away.

 

[bromide]

I was born into an extremely abusive family environment so if you want to define innocence by the realization that life is not a stroll in the park, I suppose I would have lost mine as soon as I was able to adequately comprehend what was going on. I will never relate to people who wish they could go back to childhood. For me adulthood is far, far better because I can actively choose the people who are in my life. I love the fact that my autonomy means that I am not subject to the terrible decision-making of others.

 

[basementbugs]

It probably happened gradually for me, sometime between the ages of 11 and 16. Not surprisingly, that coincides precisely with the years in which I first developed depression.

In another sort of way, despite the fact that I know this thread isn't about sex, I'd say that that experience changed something in me in a way that I don't like. I don't really know why I feel that way... because the concept of virginity is a rather silly one in my mind, and I'm generally a very liberal person when it comes to how I view sex (maybe for other people more than myself?). Possibly it's related to the fact that I've long identified as somewhere in the asexual realm of things (though I'm not sure I'm completely asexual; I usually say 'grey-a') and the fact that I don't much like sex on an emotional/psychological level. It just doesn't fit with my idea of myself (and we all know how INFPs and Type Fours are prone to having strong ideas about who they are and/or should be...). I don't really feel as though it's simply about physical virginity, though the experience did make me feel like I lost something, psychologically, in a not-so-pleasant way. I guess I'd call it some sort of innocence, because I just never really liked the idea of sex being a part of my life. Even worse, I ended up pregnant (yay contraception fail! /sarcasm) last year; that screwed with my sense of self so horribly that I became suicidal for most of the nine weeks I was pregnant before having an abortion. Everything surrounding sex and sexuality, and its involvement in my life, has made me feel like something has been stolen from me. I don't really know why my views regarding sex and myself are so different from the way I view what's "okay" for other people... *shrugs*

 

[kyliecarefree]

I was eleven when I realized the world was a much harder and harsher place than I thought it was. All at once it seemed like my environment had gone from being safe and friendly to hostile and serious. I had switched school districts, and started at a new middle school with only a few people I knew. I thought I would make friends fast, but was startled to discover that everyone was very catty and malicious. It was traumatizing, but I'm glad I went through the experience (although I could have done with a few more years of being oblivious and content). It happens to everyone (rightly so), and through working out the issues that middle school made visible I've become/am becoming a much healthier person.

 

[lifeisanillusion]

I think it comes and goes. For a while it seemed to be gone more often than not. I see innocence as seeing everything as fresh and new. Like I am seeing something for the first time. Things are beautiful and mysterious. When I think of innocence, I think of the way small children play. They are totally amused and enthralled by the simplest things. Their imaginations are awesome, so much better than adults. During the summer while I stayed at a hostel in the mountains, a young lady, around 20, was feeding a gopher at the hostel. She was totally mesmerized by it and kept feeding it and taking pictures of it for around 15 minutes. That was innocent to me.

Whenever i am living in the present moment, I am innocent. That is when things look fresh and new, even things I have seen hundreds of times. Things are not normally beautiful, are beautiful. When walking some clients, I had such a moment a few days ago. I've done the walk so often, but I was in the present moment, and everything looked so alive. Even muddy puddles in the ditch along the gravel road. They were beautiful. I lost myself in the moment. When I am in the present moment, life is amazing. Even if I am feeling sad. So to me, innocence is staying in the present moment. In the present moment, i don't really exist. Everything is one, all the boundaries that are normally there are gone. Experiences like this happen quite often for me. Innocence is something I hope I never loose. Unfortunately, society does not seem to value innocence. It always wants you to be worrying about something, striving to be somewhere other than you are. You will be happy when this happens, or you buy this, or get this job.

I am the only one that can take my innocence away. Since I like it, I will keep it around. Oh yeah, innocence totally happens when I am not looking for it! Looking specifically for it, is the best way to never find it. Just be. Live in the present and forget yourself. Never grow up!