Becoming Aaron 3/20: Growing Out of It?

 There was a time when Aaron thought maybe he’d just grow out of it.

By the time he turned twelve, things began to shift. Not just in his body, though that was part of it. His limbs stretched longer. His voice started catching in his throat, teetering between boyish and something deeper. His friends at school talked more about sports, jokes that were somehow both loud and secretive, and girls—though none of them quite knew what they meant by it.

And Aaron? He still thought about softness.

But not as often.

Not because the urge was gone, but because it had gotten harder to make space for it. There were more expectations now: to change quickly in locker rooms, to be present at sleepovers, to be cool and casual. There wasn’t time to build a belly out of towels after school—not when he had math homework, and his parents asked him to “be more active,” and everything felt like it was speeding up.

He sometimes caught himself staring at the drawer, the one that still held all his padding pieces. He didn’t open it for weeks at a time. Sometimes months. And when he finally did, it was with a mix of longing and something that almost resembled shame. Why did it still matter so much?

One afternoon, while cleaning his room, he pulled out the drawer and stared at its contents. It all looked so childish now—wrinkled T-shirts, stretched-out pillowcases. He picked up a balled hoodie and held it to his chest, breathing in the faint scent of fabric softener and time. For a moment, he pressed it under his shirt again, just like he used to.

The mirror reflected someone different now.

Taller. Narrower. More angular. He turned sideways, seeing the makeshift belly bulge awkwardly. It didn’t look like it used to. Not as seamless. Not as easy to pretend. It hit him then—not with sadness, exactly, but with a kind of uncertainty: Do I still want this?

For a while, he didn’t know.

He tried to move on. He played more video games. He started skateboarding. He tried to laugh when other kids made jokes about weight or bodies. He focused on school. He got through the year without touching the drawer again.

But it never really went away.

Sometimes in class, he’d glance at the boys who walked with that natural confidence. The ones who didn’t try to hide their bodies. Some of them had rounder stomachs, but they didn’t seem to care. Others were tall and lean, but wore their clothes in a way that made them look filled out—full. There was something in the way they carried themselves that made Aaron ache, like they knew who they were, and it showed.

He didn’t want to stop being soft inside. But he didn’t yet know how to keep that part of himself while the rest of the world demanded he grow up.

So, for a while, he floated.

In between.

Not quite padded. Not quite free.

Just a boy with a full drawer and an emptier chest, waiting for something—he didn’t know what.

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