most people can remember a point in their lives where they left their childhood behind, no turning back. innocence was a recent memory and somehow unappealing because you're eager to explore what you had yet to be exposed to all those years. we're all in a hurry to grow up, to not be treated as a child and know everything there is to know about the world.
it happens all at once, so while you're leaving everything for everything, the transition is altogether exhilarating. in fact you don't really notice there was one until look back. ah, the power of self-reflection. you forget your childhood dreams as the expectations set in. your dreams are suddenly implausible, and you scramble to find society's highest regarded profession.
i didn't have time to dream. reality stuck them somewhere in the back of my mind.
i've always prided myself in having always been imaginative, creative, artistic, athletic, as well as the countless other things your parents simply marvel about. and somehow i'm afraid that my dreams were dictated by them. i can tell you right now i've always wanted to be gorgeous- a model actually. that's how the photoshoots began. i would have killed to be popular, and in high school it happened, sure enough. i wanted to be mia hamm, although i would have been thrilled with any professional athlete. to this day whenever i put headphones in and listen to music that can be remotely classified as "motivational", i picture myself in a sports movie, usually soccer. i've dreamt of being famous since i can remember. if modelling or professional sports didn't work out, i'd write my own autobiography. not so much for the money, but because i love the sound [not literally, i'm rather annoyed by it] of my own voice. things i've kept either hidden or only a select people know about me would finally be out on the open, and to the entire world at that. i'd rather have you know and judge me than for you to think i'm someone i'm not or to not understand why i am the way i am. most people who would read it wouldn't even know me, but after, they would. i would have loved to be a mermaid if i could have been anything in the world. they're beautiful [well, i would have been had i gotten my way], can breathe underwater, swim really fast, have long flowing hair... unfortunately i have just defined myself as a victim of fantasy.
i lived in one among the comforts of my imagination and backyard until my sophomore year of high school, a few months before i started driving. when my focus drifted to my social life, my imagination left me. no longer was it socially acceptable to "play make believe" anymore for hours with your younger siblings, although i could play for hours on end with mine. i was thrusted into the mature world where becoming popular- no, even acknowledged by a guy- became an obsession. my best friend moved back to australia and a new one would be my roommate in college. my relationship faded with my sisters more quickly than i could realize, and i stopped at nothing to get what, or who, i wanted. i taught myself not to feel anything i didn't want to, so my parents' anguish in my declining moral state was disregarded as a petty annoyance, my sisters, unnoticed, and guys who hooked up with me and then someone else, simply part of the game, and with a smile on my face the entire time. people come and go without a second glance, and i had no intention of pursuing one unsolicited.
i was the definition of a badass. my dream morphed from being famous to invincible. i know it's still in there somewhere, that little speck of vulnerability. i wouldn't be writing at all if there wasn't. now if someone could please take me back to my backyard and give me a soccer ball and jersey with the number 9 on it and some headphones, that'd be sweet, thanks.
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