Photo by Cottonbro Studio | Graphic art by Angela Bella Morte

I Never Needed Neverland

For most of my life, I wanted to be a lost boy.

Not because I didn't know who I was, but because I did, and being a lost boy meant I didn't have to do anything with it yet. It meant permission. Permission to stay up too late, to chase the wrong lights, to treat consequences like something that happened to other people. I leaned into it the way you lean into a bad decision when it's the only thing that feels alive: the partying, the escapism, the recklessness worn like a leather jacket that was two sizes too big and fit perfectly anyway.

For a while, that was enough. Stagnation doesn't announce itself. It creeps in disguised as comfort, as routine, as this is just who I am now. And by the time I noticed I'd stopped moving, I'd already been standing still for years.

Here's the part I didn't expect: Peter Pan was never a character to me. He was a crush. A type. A pattern I kept meeting in different bodies, different names, different faces. Charming. Adventurous. Endlessly fun in the way that only someone with zero stake in tomorrow can be. I wanted him it so badly that I didn't notice I kept getting him...again, and again, and again. Like the universe was trying to teach me something and I kept raising my hand to volunteer for another round of the lesson.

What nobody tells you about loving Peter Pan is that someone has to be Wendy. Someone has to build the house under the ground. Someone has to remember to eat, to pay for things, to make sure there's a place to land after all that flying. I told myself I was Tink: quick, bright, a little dangerous, sprinkling magic on somebody else's hero's journey. That's the story I wanted. But it kept turning into the other one. I kept turning into the other one. The one holding the map while he got to be the adventure.

He got to be reckless because I was being responsible for him. He got to be endlessly charming because charm doesn't have to plan anything, doesn't have to remember anniversaries or notice when the fridge is empty. He got to fly. I got to make sure there was still a floor when he came back down.

And I did that. More than once. I did it so many times I lost count of the specific heartbreaks and started just counting the shape of them instead. It was always the same silhouette, boy-shaped, wing-shaped, gone-shaped.

Here's where it gets uncomfortable to admit: I over-corrected. Hard. I went from reckless girl chasing lost boys to a woman who tried to control every variable so tightly there was no air left in the room. If chaos hadn't worked, I decided perfection would. I worked myself into the ground trying to be so responsible, so buttoned-up, so not that girl anymore, that I built a different kind of prison. Just as small. Just as suffocating. I traded Neverland for a spreadsheet and called it growth.

But perfect isn't the opposite of lost. It's just lost wearing a blazer.

So here's where I've landed, finally, after all the flying and all the ground-holding and all the over-correcting: I don't want either extreme anymore. I don't want the chaos and I don't want the cage. I want freedom. Real freedom, the kind that comes with people who meet you halfway instead of leaving you holding the map. I want adventure that doesn't require me to sacrifice the floor underneath it. I want joy that isn't a reaction to how much I've been suppressing.

I never needed the lost boys. I never needed Peter Pan, or the version of him I kept meeting wearing different faces. The magic was never his to lend me. Tink didn't need a hero to be luminous. She just forgot that for a while, because it's easier to shine for someone else's story than to admit the light was always yours to keep.

I'm not interested in Neverland anymore. I'm interested in growing in my own terms. Not stagnant, not perfect, just awake. Still chasing adventure. Still reckless enough to want something real. But this time, I'm not doing it to fill someone else's sky.

x Angela Bella Morte x