There are only a few main characters.  They’re the ones who make it to success, who find true love, who wind up with the happy endings.  The rest of us?  We’re side characters.  We get by.

Shalott

I am the Lady of Shalott.

I was content in my tower, observing the world and reveling in it from afar, just bright reflections in a mirror.

It was a prince, ironically, who ended me.  I caught a glimpse of his face, and as he passed beyond the frame of the mirror, I could not help myself.  I turned, I pressed my nose against the windowpane and watched him pass.  He never looked my way.

That was when it ended.

Since when?

Since when?

Since when has the world been so bleak?

Just yesterday, you were a butterfly.  Granted, you never soared, but you fluttered.  You were lighter than air, and the faintest breeze swept you off your feet.  Your colours lacked subtlety, but they were charming, their brightness a gift.  

Just yesterday, you were sunshine.  Smiles came as naturally to you as breathing, skipping as easily as walking.  Your dancing was awkward, innocent, nonconformist.  You left the world a little brighter in your wake, because you loved it so.

Just yesterday, you were a queen.  You ruled your own picturesque, diminutive kingdom with a light, diminutive hand that was quicker to wave than to clench.  You scarcely touched the scepter, but the world worked your way just because it loved to see you happy.

What are you now?

What changed?  Was it the world, or you?

Now, you are tear-tracks, shattered glass, a waif peering through windows at the bright, warm rooms within.

What have you done?

I fell in love.

My writing is deteriorating along with my idealism

 "Once I spoke the language of flowers...
How did it go?
How did it go?"

Being in love is being afraid to say anything to him, wanting to scream "fuck it, you can have him," but knowing you can't, you can't even scream it inside, because it's not really what you feel, is it?  Being in love is wishing you could get out of this, because it's tearing you apart and ruining everything you've fought for, taking you away from people you love.  Being in love is a perpetual need to cry, hovering in the back of your mind and your soul, because you'll never have enough. 

It's perfectly healthy if you're the heroine of a romance novel or a fairytale.  Two human beings in love with one another, it's supposed to be amazing.

If you're not the heroine of a romance novel or the princess in a fairytale, apparently life is just fucking with you.

She had thought she was getting better, but she wasn't.  And now her heart was breaking.

I... don't even know.

And when the universe runs itself into the ground and the music fades, when nothing remains but memories floating without minds to reside in and no medium by which to exist, then perhaps all the unsaid things and all the trammeled feelings will have leave for release and will mingle and console one another... when we are all gone.

She would never know how it began, because, in reality, when do these things ever begin?  Was it set in motion at the dawn of time, something fated that needed only time to occur?  Was it the product of a unique set of probabilities, where the change of a single one would have meant something entirely different?  Did it matter?

Say, now that you mention it... not really.

She'd been forced to hide herself, to squeeze and contort herself into a tiny form they'd contrived for her.  Not too fast, not too slow.  Shoulders back, smaller steps, never laugh, never smile.  Or, study, read, sleep, eat, don't look out the window, for god's sake, keep your feet on the ground.  Be a lady, be a scientist, be a doctor,  but be something we can contain in a single word.  If it wasn't in the dictionary, it was extraneous.

She never could contain herself in a box, or a ball, or a pentagram.  Her tongue said to sing, to shape and chase each phrase, each sigh, to coax an instant of beauty out of each and every word.  Her eyes said to fly, to spread her wings and watch the word fall away, to be at home among white spires and mountains in the sky.  Her hands and eyes, befriending one another,  said to draw, to paint, to shape, to revel in the feeling of sharpies on skin, the soft curve of a cheek, the shadows and folds of cloth, the satisfaction of capturing it all on paper, or for that matter, in clay. Her mind said to die, to follow the questions of the universe into the infinity of the unknown.  How could she contain it all?  How could she be a single word, some tiny, simplistic thing?

They tried again and again to push her into a box, but each time, she couldn't help but float up again, passively, because it was her nature.  She wanted to lie still, sometimes, to curl up into that box so they would love her, to be what they wanted. 

Her heart said to feel, to dream, to be.  To take all that she was, to breathe life into it, to chase each concept further up and out, to take a flower and paint a forest, to take a cup of liquid and toss it into the air and watch it splay across the sky, to chase bubbles, to build blanket forts, to run through sprinklers and roll through grass and laugh.  To giggle, to scream, to cry, to know everything the books said in person, in reality. 

A one-liner

Is it still a lie if you really, honestly thought you were telling the truth?

When you live in a perpetual state of crying inside and laughing on the outside, and you cannot say which is more genuine, is it a warning signal?

I say regularly that, were I given the chance to lessen the intensity of feeling that courses through me every second of every day, to ease the craziness, the confusion, the highs and the lows, I would refuse.  Every gasp, ever bubble of laughter, every choked cry--it is all beautiful, it is all precious, it is all a profound part of living that I dare not give up, for fear of forgetting who I am.  Nevertheless, once in a while, I am worn down and exhausted by the high, ecstatic levels at which I am living.  Once in a while, I wish I were a little duller, my heart a little quieter, just for a week or two. 

Maybe, then, I'd have peace enough to think.

Desperate Attempts at Optimism

I shall never be conquered by bitterness and cynicism.  I shall live ecstatically, intensely, gasping always for more and never holding my breath, always seeking, always reaching.  I shall always cling to the notion that life is beautiful, that chivalry is alive and well, that romance is not a fantasy.  No mischance, no accident, no unfortunate turn of events will take away the sweet pearl of naïveté that I have carefully fostered, tended, polished. 

Hope shall never die within me.

Romance is ever just over the horizon; this does not mean I will never reach it.  I will walk a thousand days and a thousand nights, pause and scream and walk again, continue until I am crawling if that is what it takes to find the happiness I seek.  I shall not allow my ideals and my dreams to be wrested from me.  I shall never be broken.

Disillusionment is overrated. 

I am not stupid.  I know that the world is difficult, that ambition and idealism and romance are difficult to maintain, that some force out there throws everything it has against all that is beautiful and good.  I know that I will be hurt, more than once, along the way.  I will not be marked, however.  I will not allow my soul to be crossed with callouses and scars.  I shall face each day and each relationships without reservations, without allowing the past to cast a shadow on the present.

I am alive, and for now, that’s all that matters.