Listen up, kids

Listen up, kids

Storytime

Me, or maybe me

Likes to imagine things

Grand gestures and romantic big big things

Likes to read and see myself echoed in the words of the author

Rip the book in two

Dive in

Swim

A boiling pot of running black and white

Dragged lines hurt the image of myself I have of myself

Adventure?

Please.

I do not venture

The me, the maybe me, feints at venturing

'Til all those castles and countryside walks and Austenian plots and magic battles

Falter

Trip

Fall and fail me each time I face the risk of

falling

and

failing

Massive velvet curtains dropping to expose nothing

I masquerade as someone who loves big things

Dreams of big big things

Someone who has a enormous destiny

A fulfilling fate

I want that but then there is the "but"

Because I will be attending a school that carries something with it that is too big to hold

An Ivy League school

No longer words but reality

Words and words and words

I read words

I fill my time with words

I imagine myself in them

Intimately associated with the dance they do

Still, I am just herea

And they cannot save me now

I am just me

And the everyone will be disappointed  

Oxford dictionaries tremble and disassemble because I am just an act

Right now, I am everything

But then everything comes to a stop because I am great here, but will not be good enough out there

In real world fear

Away from imaginary musings

Listen up, kids, here is the story: I read a college acceptance letter once and it scared me to death

Because it is an adventure, one which is rather terribly uncontained

It is an adventure I cannot stop from rattling against the tight bars in my head

Breaking free

Stealing the keys I thought I wanted to use to unlock things but decided against those big plans I had and opted for fear instead

Great here, failing out there?

Help me, it can’t be

Me, the maybe me, enjoys ball gowns but has the sense of Cinderella to run

Me, the maybe me, enjoys protection and the neverending chase for perfection

Dictionaries fail me and the one word I can think of: scared

Scared they will be smarter and faster out there

Scared they will see behind curtains and ball gowns and dictionaries

Scared Ivy League will mean nothing once in it

And that my new adventure will fail because I am an imaginer, not a doer and it is the best kept secret I have ever pretended not to know

And so the new adventure is prettier and easier when restrained, at bay, in my head, not in the form of acceptence letter

When it is a dream it is sort of empty, but protected at least

See, I want so badly to venture

But I am scared that repeated failing - “the jig is up” - will prohibit perfection and I will cease to exist

Or I am scared because I am the doer but have never “done” anything like this before and fear will make me stop all together

And then, yes, I will cease to exist

Again

Me, the “this is me” me, wants to be, is expected to be, and therefore needs to be a force to be reckoned with

Storytime

And here is the moral, kids: I don’t know how to