They ask you what you wanna be when you grow up
Because they know you can be anything besides who you are now.

They ask you what you will be when you're young and from then on you're expected to grow into it
Because you're expected to grow out of this behavior,
Out of the first skin that is ever truly yours
They trick you and you shed it off way before you should so they can get to you then

They encourage you to dream while you're young because true dreams are far too big to grow into
They ask you to choose wisely 
They say change your ways while you're young because once you grow into something you can't make it bigger it will only get smaller

They encourage you to reach for the stars while you can still feel your arms
While blood still pumps from your heart
Before your circulation is cut off by what you wanted to be when you grow up.

Maybe it seems dramatic
But you can't breathe dramatic
You can't be dramatic unless they tell you you can be unless they tell you you are
Because then they start calling you names and you take them all to heart and you believe yourself to be independent and you pretend to fight back against the ones who gave you your names and your new skin doesn't fit right

It's too tight
You can read the labels on your arms and forehead
And you look in the mirror well you can read backwards
Backwards appears on you and suddenly you are

What do you want to be when you grow up?
Because you can't be who you are now.
And you miss your old skin, flawless, no labels.
Because now the ink stains don't wash off and you're blurry and you'll wait to shed the too tight skin but it will never come off
The same as the ink of your stories will never spill from your veins quite the way that blood does

Because ink runs faster
And you can't get it to stop
No matter how much you bandage your body it just makes everything feel tighter.

This isn't what you wanted to be.

But it's not up to you,
It's up to the tv, and the people you want to be like. The astronauts and the singers
The dancers and the firemen well they're all bleeding too.
And you don't know what to do and you think "so this is how it feels to be grown up"

But you're not really,
Not yet anyways.
Because you're still naïve,
And you still have hope that there's so much more to life.
Because you don't really grow up until you drown.
You drown in the ink and blood and you can't see anything anymore.
It's all dark and blurry and red. And you stop looking at the past with wistfulness or distaste,
You stop looking at the past in general.
All you can do to try not to drown is look up but it's too late before you realize it.
Your head's already covered.

You've drowned, and all you can do is keep looking forward like you did in the future.
And you'll go ask someone who still glows with the white light of youth, "what they want to be when they grow up?

And you'll desperately want them to be like you,
So that you can have proof that someone who shines so bright can swim harder, tread longer, and dive deeper and come out at the least tarnished but still beautiful.

And you don't remember what someone who wanted that, did to you. Because you've drowned now,
And you think you're the only one who didn't make it.
"I believe in you." You'll say, as if it had never been said to you,
And you'll say "change your ways while your young"
You'll say that in the future you won't remember this or that, because it's true.
Once you grow up, you want everything that you've never had to begin with.
You want to even the playing field when it's been even the whole time.
You don't talk about drowning because you honestly can't remember it.
All you remember is not being strong enough.
But that's okay.
Because there are stronger people,
Who will fight a little harder.
But in turn there is a future, that grows a little darker.

They need guidance to be great, and they have to have a plan,
So the drowned climb into the sinking raft,
To give the survivors the upper hand.