Real Talk

Graduation is in eight days. Graduating is harder than I thought it would be, though. For that matter, going to school is harder than I thought it would be. I never thought I'd be the kind of person who got senioritis, but I did. Last week I counted up my absences to see how many classes I could still miss without needing to go to attendance school. 

I don't know where I belong and I'm stuck between two different worlds on multiple levels. The reality and the fantasy, the high school and the college, the child's and the adult's. It's kind of confusing.

I don't know if I'm happy or not, which makes me sad. But I continue to put on a mask of ignorance when inside I'm falling apart, and even though most of you know who I am, I still operate as if I'm protected by the guise of anonymity. 

I keep wondering if I will ever fall in love, if that person I probably haven't met yet could fall in love with me back, if I'll ever get married. Except I don't want to be a mother right now. Is that even allowed? I can't stand being around little children for a long time, and I don't want to be treated the way my siblings treat my mom.

I have a tendency to find scars on my arms and legs and hands and feet but I don't know how they got there, and a solid month after prom I was still hoping I'd be asked.

I love listening to Josh Groban's voice, especially when he sings in Italian. It makes me want to fly to Italy, but I have a little sister who broke my heart last Saturday when amid angry words and frustrated voices, she said, "I don't have a safe place."

I almost went to a different high school. Twice. But I stuck it out and now I can't seem to stop wondering if I'd be happier right now had I made the other choice. In the end, I can't say I regret my choice, but I still wonder.

I have horrible allergies in the late spring and early summer. My hair is brown and curly and I've been led to believe that it's my one redeeming quality. There is also a special place in my heart for the number 10.

I have fallen deeply in love with Earth and been heartbroken because it's rapidly disappearing in light of something called progress. I'm in love with the feeling of wind in my hair and wet sand between my toes. The smell of summer. Cold rain at night and warm rain in the middle of the day.

I miss the feeling of being in love with him. I got carried away but I forgot my heart and it still hurts sometimes but I think it's a good kind of hurt. For some strange reason I still refuse to give up on magic even though it's been proven again and again that it does not exist.

I'm terrified of spiders. I'm even more terrified that this post just sounds like me complaining and none of you are going to want to be my friend if you read this, because I don't think the real me is someone people are drawn to. Not very many people will really remember me in ten years. I don't show up in other people's posts and I know I shouldn't care but I kind of do. I'm not trying to make you feel bad for me, I am just trying to be real, because once upon a time I prided myself on being real and lately I only see the falseness in myself. Maybe I'll just delete this whole post. But probably not. Is this real enough for the world, or do I need to try again? 

Fairy Heads and Tales

The storybooks lied to me. Life doesn't turn out the way they said it would, because there isn't really a happily  ever after.

Little Red got eaten by the wolf on the road to her grandmother's house and most certainly was not saved by a daring woodcutter who just happened to be strolling by with an ax. The fairy tales didn't tell you that after 'happily ever after' happened, Phillip died and left Aurora all alone. In reality, Cinderella never even made it to the ball because her fairy godmother was just a figment of her imagination and there was no pumpkin carriage or magical transformation into a beautiful ball gown. Snow White died before the story began because the huntsman followed orders and killed her in the forest. 

And really, Ariel never even existed because mermaids aren't real. Period. 

Hansel and Gretel got eaten by the witch, Rapunzel never left her tower, Aladdin died in the Cave of Wonders, and Peter Pan grew up. Jack didn't bargain for any magic beans, he traded the cow for something that could keep him alive because that's what normal people do. Nancy Drew never made it out of her third case alive, and in real life, Lizzie Bennett never got married because she was too outspoken for a woman of her time.

When I was a little girl, I thought that life was a fairy tale. When I was in elementary school I thought that divorce was only something that happened when a spouse cheated. When I was in junior high, I thought that I would find true love and I'd know it as soon as I found it. Now I'm in high school, and I've learned the hard way that none of that is true. Life isn't a fairy tale, divorces happen for every imaginable reason, and I don't really know what true love is. In the fairy tales there's a good guy and a bad guy. Not in life. In life the lines have been blurred so that I don't know the difference between good and evil. I just know that if you're not the winner you're the loser.

No, in real life there's not really a happily ever after. There's just a series of 'once upon a times,' each with their own dragons to fight, and sometimes it just doesn't turn out the way we expected. 
Because when people stop treating each other like princes and princesses, they realize that their heads were filled with too much magic for real love. They realize they don't want to spend the rest of the story together and most definitely not happily ever after. So they go their separate ways to fight the dragon or rescue the damsel and they forget to tell the readers what really happened. 

They don't live happily ever after, because there is no such thing. 
Not anymore.