Trailblazing, or something like it.

Well here goes nothing.

It's this kind of thinking that puts my life as I know it in jeopardy.
It's this kind of thinking that doesn't work well with other peoples' kind of thinking.
I often think of what it would be like to just stop.
Stop on the trail I've been moving forward on, for the most part, and just change directions.

When I was younger I used to love going into the woods.
After all, all the good fairy tales happened with a discovery in the forest, no?
I was hoping to stumble upon the ruins of a castle or a nest of fairies or something.
I always wanted to be part of something, well, bigger, more important.
If I didn't find what I was looking for, I'd simply just pretend I did.
I'd run across logs pretending to defend my castle.
I'd make a nest out of grass and flowers inside the hole of a tree for my fairy friends.
As I got older, however, the pretending began to die down.
I never found my castle or fairies.
I never found the world outside this one that could sweep me away.
Why is it that when you grow up, you're forced to face "reality"?
You are made to live up to what people decide to be normal and you forget about your childhood spent under the trees.
You become aware of how the woods could be filled with dangers instead of fairytales.
We are forced to conceive the idea that if there is talk of magic then it's a childish thought that we need to "grow out of".
You are forced to choose one path and stick with it your entire life.
And to that I ask why?
If there is a whole world full of excitement then why must we be confined to one aspect of it?
Why must we be bound to a world of monotony, if the world is not one dimension but many?
I don't want to grow up.
I want to go back into the trees with my feeble stick sword and pretend I'm a queen defending her land.
I want to be part of something so much bigger.
I don't want to live a life of fear or regret.
I want to live a life of beauty and adventure.
When I was in the first grade, our class made a yearbook.
We had a whole page to ourselves, to write what we wanted.
Of course we had to fill out our "Favorites" (favorite food, color, song, etc.).
At the very end we had to write three things we wanted to be when we grew up.
Three.
Not one.
But three.
Granted it's not that many, but it beats the hell out of one don't you think?
So under mine I put: teacher, archaeologist, and adventurer.
Sounds to me like I wanted to be the girl version of Indiana Jones, yet I've never seen one of those movies ever.
Anyways, today of course the path I have chosen doesn't have anything to do with those three.
Along with wanting to be a queen, I've also been into drawing.
I used to draw anything that came to mind.
My adventures would be put down in color and line.
The pencil being my magic wand.
Now a days, I don't feel that way.
As I grew older, the magic began to get sucked out of my creations.
So here I am, 21 years old, in college, and constantly questioning my decisions I've made to get here today.
I often worry that my life won't be fulfilled with the things I want to fill it with.
I often feel like if little me ever met adult me, she'd be very disappointed in how she turns out.
I don't like to live like that.
Thinking like that everyday is mental poison.
I can feel it drip through my body and affecting everything it touches.
Adult me has gotten lazy and tired and bored.
Just bored of everything.
There's not magic anymore.
Only the magic I engulf myself in with books and movies about the very things I pretended to find and be.
So people that have decided to live their path look at me like I haven't grown up.
Truth is my path doesn't seem to be as clear as theirs.
My path seems to always have some sort of thorny brush of doubt or reluctance.
It's so hard for me to continue smoothly on my path, when I look back and feel I've gone the wrong way.
When all I want to do most in this world is just stop on my path and go looking for a fairy's nest.

So going back to the beginning, I'm thinking.
I'm thinking of something that no person in their own right mind would think.
Turn around.
Find the path I want to be on and get started on that one.
But I'm scared you see, because I know of the dangers in the wood now.

---Ashley R. D., 12/14/2008