They stop telling you to dream once you wake up to the reality of adulthood.
When you’re young, you are bombarded with encouraging messages, pats-on-the-back, “Hang in there, baby” posters of kittens, and teachers who encourage you to reach for the stars. It trickles down through the very beginning of high school, and as you fill out career aptitude tests that supply you with an overwhelming amount of options, you are told to take your time. “You can have it all! Anything you would like to be, you can be it.”
You blink your eyes and suddenly, it’s senior year. Suddenly the take-your-time’s turn intomake-your-decision-the-clock-is-ticking. College applications form a towering stack and all you really want to do is to search out those old dreams. Everything you seemed so passionate about—so inspired by—seems to have slipped through your fingertips. The endless possibilities have turned into financial conflicts; we live in a world where your lifestyle seems limited to your pocketbook.
I want to find the girl inside of me who gazed in wonder at city lights and faced the world without fear. I want that passion to return to me—to know, without question, what I am meant for. I want to live in a world where traveling seems feasible. I want to wander through European streets and write. Scribbling madness with great fervor into a worn-out journal, encapsulating every experience, every second. I want to paint without worrying about color theory and composition. To write without analyzing grammar. I want to love without worrying about meeting expectations or falling short of what seems acceptable.
I want to tell my peers that dreaming without limits carries no expiration date. I want to live in a world where perpetual imagination is encouraged.
These are the thoughts of lately and soon. These are the things that keep me awake in a reality where I find it difficult to recognize the face in the mirror. Sometimes I feel like I must have slept through the last few years of my life. The people around me seem almost like strangers, though none more unknown than myself. I want to rediscover who I am. A rebirth of identity.
You blink your eyes and suddenly, it’s senior year. Suddenly the take-your-time’s turn intomake-your-decision-the-clock-is-ticking. College applications form a towering stack and all you really want to do is to search out those old dreams. Everything you seemed so passionate about—so inspired by—seems to have slipped through your fingertips. The endless possibilities have turned into financial conflicts; we live in a world where your lifestyle seems limited to your pocketbook.
I want to tell my peers that dreaming without limits carries no expiration date. I want to live in a world where perpetual imagination is encouraged.
These are the thoughts of lately and soon. These are the things that keep me awake in a reality where I find it difficult to recognize the face in the mirror. Sometimes I feel like I must have slept through the last few years of my life. The people around me seem almost like strangers, though none more unknown than myself. I want to rediscover who I am. A rebirth of identity.
I simply seek clarity.
xo, Maddie.
xo, Maddie.
