A moment in your life...and mine.

There's a question I thought of a few months back and I just remembered it again. Not that it could be answered in a larger sense, but still...many people, if they have had this experience, remember the moment with perfect clarity.

When was the exact moment you lost your innocence?

By this I mean a moment of clarity, a real comprehension of the harshness of life, followed by the inevitable depressing feeling that there is NOTHING you can do about it. Life will never be exactly what you want it to be.

Mine was sitting on my bed at age 11, staring my wall. It was marred with dirty fingerprints from many lonely patty-cake games, and the bottom half was scuffed with the marks from my stomping, frustrated feet. My mother had locked me in my room to pray. I remember feeling overwhelming despair, both at the situation and the realization that I had been fighting this very epiphany for almost three years.