...a girl wishes for things she knows she will never have. Or thinks will never have.
Every morning, the sun's piercing light wakes her up and she wishes the sun would never rise again. She summons the strength and courage to get out of her uncomfortable bed that kept her in a half-asleep-half-awake state all night and face what she knows would be another lackluster day.
She goes into the bathroom and before she positions herself under the shower, she pays the wall mirror a visit and stares at her reflection for several minutes. As she looks at herself, a myriad of thoughts go running in her head, most of which are wishful thinking. I wish I had the courage to run after my dreams, she often tells herself. But she knows that even if she could be in possession of that amount of courage to push her to chase her dreams, she knows that her unfortunate circumstances, which she has no control of, will always keep her hands and feet bound. They will always keep her in this cage that has provided her a risk-free, safe environment in which she could at least thrive and survive day by day.
As she goes to that place which she neither loves nor hates, she asks herself, "Are you happy?" But she brushes that question aside and just goes on to thank the Almighty Deity for keeping her alive and providing her a life that perhaps some would even envy.
She arrives at that place, sits down and does what she has to do for the day. Every once in a while, her mind goes adrift to a region of her memory that she often visits. Once again, she sees herself standing in front of a rowdy but adoring crowd, singing and losing herself in the music. The crowd applauds and she feels that this is the world where she belongs. She knows and people know that music is the only thing she was great at. That's where she feels most useful, happy and content.
That world was supposed to be her home. But she had to abandon it in favor of practicality. "You will never be able to feed yourself in the future if you live in that world," her elders warned her.
She snaps back to reality and continues to work on the day's assigned tasks. Before she knows it, the sun has already resigned and temporarily abdicated the throne to the darkness, the moon and the stars. She decides to stay a little longer because she likes working in utter silence and solitude.
When she finally runs out of the creative energy that pushes her to finish off her work, she decides to call it a day, turns out the lights and leaves.
On her way home, she finds herself thinking again. On most nights, she concludes that she is useless and unneeded in the unfamiliar place where she is. She is a stranger to this place. And quite obviously, she's not too happy about that.
If I can't be in the world that I first called home, then there must be some place else where I can find, at least, fulfillment, she tells herself. She wants to be in a place where she would feel useful, where she would find something to be passionate about. But where is that place? How do I get there? How do I know that that is what my heart desires? And what if I fail at finding the happiness and contentment that my heart seeks in that place?
When she asks around in the hopes of finding clarity and enlightenment, she instead receives responses that cause her to be more confused than she already is. "If you stay there, life will be a lot better for you, you'll see," they say. To her, it then becomes a question of choosing between present fulfillment and future contentment. But is there really contentment in store for her in this place in the future?
She gets exhausted from all the thinking she does in a day that more often than not, she forgets dinner and chooses to succumb to the call of her bed. Before she shuts her eyes, she stares at the ceiling, letting her thoughts play around in her head until she falls asleep.
Hours later, the sunlight will rudely rouse her from her sleep. And her day will proceed just the way it did the day before, perhaps with minor, trivial deviations.
Until she knows with certainty what her heart and soul desire and until she becomes brave enough to let her desire forge the path of her life's journey, her psychedelic dreams, unrealistic as they may be, will help her get by in her almost lifeless daily life. Maybe in this particular day, she will see herself signing copies of a novel she wrote. It's about how a faint-heartened girl, frightened of taking risks, finally found the courage to believe that her unfortunate situation is not caused by the circumstances she thinks she has no control of but by her combined fear and unwillingness to take that one big leap outside of her comfort zone.
