My mark

I'm not perfect. I will never be perfect. But I don't want to be perfect. While everyone else walks in white, I leave footprints in black. The smallest difference; a small drop of colored paint in a world sketched in gray scale. So while everyone else walks in white, I leave footprints in black. My footprints.

"somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true."
        --Lyman Frank Baum

The Possibility of Heroes

I can’t recall the exact place, the exact minute, or just exactly what it was that I was doing at the time. But I can tell you that it’s a sensation, not a memory. Growing up, you want nothing more than to be like everybody else. You see the book cover, not what the pages behind it are filled with. Maybe at one point you wanted to look like Barbie. Or maybe you wanted to be the strongest person in the world, like you thought your dad was. But that’s the catch: it’s only a thought. When you’re young you have the innocence of childhood. The moment in life where your parents, siblings, family, will always stick their necks out for you. They’ll hold your hand, be your best friend, do whatever it takes to see you grow your wings. But once you’ve grown your wings, the wind sweeps you off your feet and carries you away. Yes, you still label those people as your family, but they no longer hold your hand. They are not the same shells of the people you grew up with and thought you knew. Falling into adulthood lets you flip the front cover of that book. And you finally find out why you can’t judge a book by it’s cover; because the cover is so misleading. The hero figure that held you while you cried about the monsters under your bed is now the same one who pushes you into uncomfortable situations with hopes that you’ll learn from it. The older sibling that protected you from the thunder and lightning now makes fun of you in front of their friends.

To me it’s not a memory, but a sensation of waking up one day and realizing you don’t have any heroes and you don’t look up to anybody anymore. It’s the feeling you get when you wake up from sleeping. When the sky is half awake and half asleep, just like you. Confusion sets in as you realize you have no memory of how long it’s been since you first fell asleep. I came up in a time with no heroes because I cracked the shell of childhood. Heroes are a reflection in a pond to me. Sometimes you can see them, but in my life they never seem to be real. You can admire someone’s qualities, characteristics, looks, but is there really a single person you want to be exactly like? People screw up so many times. No one is perfect and you need to be able to except that. But I would rather know that I am in control, independant, and making my own mistakes, than copying someone else’ s. We learn from other’s mistakes’, but we don’t take note until they happen to us directly. If we try, we can avoid the world’s mistakes. I want to be me. I don’t want to sit around and be like someone else, or sit around and wait for someone to come save me. Because when you sit around and wait, you have no proof that someone will show up, and you have no proof that following their path will be the right choice. I came up in a time with no heroes because I choose to rely on myself and not believe in a chance that I’m sick of having to fix.





"A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because her trust is not on the branch but on her own wings."

--Unknown

Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart

Those masterful images become complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweeping of a street,
old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut,
who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start,
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

--William Butler Yeates

Create a path

You don't need to be a queen to be able to wear diamonds. You don't need to be a princess to wear a crown. You don't have to sit around and wait to be happy. You don't have to be locked up in that tower. You posses the power to escape. You are the key to your own door. You will be whatever you want to be. You cannot hold back or you will get nowhere. You keep moving forward, whether it be on foot or by wheel. You may look back as if a mirror, but do not dwell on the past. Do not let your mirror become magic and suck you back in. You have to create a life of your own, or live with knowing that you have chosen to follow someone else's path.

"There will always be a reason why you meet people. Either you need them to change your life or you're the one that will change theirs."

          --Madeline Sheehan

Bouncing Back

You have to be able to find a balance between happy and sad in your life. When you've hit rock bottom, the only place for you to go is up. When you hit the top, the only place for you to go is down. Unless perhaps you have somehow managed to grow a pair of magical wings. In which case, congratulations. Otherwise, we are all making our way in life. And each and every one of us is headed to the top. But you have to be able to know every feeling in order to survive. If you don't know happiness then how can  you be sad? And if you've never been sad then how do you truly know what happiness feels like?


"I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs, but how high he bounces when he hits the bottom."

                         --George S. Patton

Pushed

She's tested the water and dipped her toe in. Now all she has to do is jump.
Or get pushed.
Which ever one comes first.


"Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance."

             --Samuel Johnson

Influences

When you crash and burn, the only thing left to do is pick up and move on. I can't think of another way to say the truth so bluntly. When you hit rock bottom, the only direction left to go is up. When you run out of hope, you survive off of friends and faith. When you lose your heart, you learn to live without. When you have no money, you learn to make do with it and keep a smile. It's never the best, but we learn from our mistakes. What we do wrong, we are given a second chance to change the outcome. It is only a mistake two times, however. After two, it has become your choice. It is your choice to change your future, and to be influenced by others. The earth won't spin unless we all work together. We work together by making choices and influencing each other.


"Happy people know suffering more than anyone else, and that's how they can see just how damn beautiful their lives are. It's because they've seen the depths."

                     --Brianna Wies