Happy Endings.

When I was younger I didn’t worry about boys or makeup.


I remember grazing down the tall and robust aisles of the store, wheeling around on my shopping cart like a champion figure skater. I remember feeling the wind in my hair and that unstoppable feeling of combined speed and grace that brought me smoothly to the aisle’s end.

I remember pumping my legs on a rusty swing set in my backyard, swinging so high that it felt like I would fall twenty stories if I jumped off. I remember waiting for the perfect moment to release my steel grip from the chains of the swing and blast my legs forward into the grassy safety.

Sometimes, I would creep into the dining room and extract the Christmas apron from the china cabinet and bring it with me outside. I proudly tied it around my waist and proceeded to locate the nearest rabbit hole. I would peer in, key in hand, and try to calculate the approximate distance from my backyard to Wonderland.

Moments like these make up the beautiful image I have of childhood. Though when I look back on myself just a few years ago, I think of so many things I wish I could’ve told myself.

“Hey, when that boy you like doesn’t like you back, don’t cry too hard over it. There will be others. And they will be exactly what you’ve always imagined.”

“And when you feel like the only thing stopping you from doing what you love to do is a mean girl who calls you names, remember, she will amount to half the person you will.”

“And when it seems like there’s no hope, turn to the ones who have stood by you from the start, even if they’re different too. Never be embarrassed of the people you love.”

And even though I try to be wise and follow my own advice, I never listen to myself. I may feel older and wiser, but I will always be that little girl, swinging on the bars of the jungle gym, playing “Alice in Wonderland”. Even now I find myself looking up at the stars, utterly mesmerized by the sheer size of the universe. Though cliché, I realize how insignificantly tiny I am, and it, in turn, leads me to a whole new train of thought.

I realize that my high school experience, though mildly humorous, means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. I have these realizations and they come one after another, like a rapidly pacing heartbeat. My bad memories are ultimately good.

That nice boy, who sat with me and watched Tim Burton movies introduced me to one of my now favorite bands. The girls who were mean to me in middle school showed me just how great my real friends were. That boy who bullied me because he probably liked me, taught me a lesson in good old-fashioned self-defense. And finally I realize that the girls who are superficial and self-conscious are not the ones who are going to change the world. And who’s to say that I am either. But I think that my probability of success is slightly higher than theirs. And that makes me very happy.