My Polly Pocket dolls, my Barbie Dreamhouse, my warm, hazy summer days spent on the playground, my Junie b jones books, and me watching Dragon Tales every day after school, sitting on my living room couch, devouring Twitches; my 7-year-old self, unable to sleep that night because I truly believed what it showed. Everything felt so real as a kid, every detail, every moment. The butterflies that would sit on a lowly sunflower in a field near my house, and I would sit there and watch them like I never wanted anything to hurt them. I was obsessed with beautiful things as a kid — I still do. That beauty existed because that same beauty existed within me. I was in love with fairytales, in make-believe lands, in mermaids in the water, and witches during Halloween. I would play dress-up and reenact scenes from my favourite shows as if they were real. I pretended my Islamic school teacher was Victor from House of Anubis, and there was a secret treasure buried deep in the mosque that I attended. There was an innocence that I had, an imagination that never faded, and dreams that never stopped. I held my head high, lived in the clouds, and never wanted to come down. Then I grew up, and reality set in, and the world suddenly became dark. That darkness arrived and never left. Everything felt so light as a kid, but when the darkness came, it brought this heaviness.
There’s a sense of innocence that you see in babies, in cats, in children, that people end up falling in love with. A love that is pure until a certain kind of obsession arrives. That obsession is a raging desire to rid of that innocence from the world because they question why something so beautiful can somehow exist. There’s a reason why all good things are hidden away, why parents are protective over their children, why cat owners get heartbroken when their cat shows signs of abuse, or why babies need constant protection and attention. When something pure exists, this world will somehow attempt to corrupt it, when a child’s sense of wonder and imagination is somehow tarnished as they grow up, and they have to come to grips with reality. We lose so much of that magic because this world refuses to let us stay innocent, and somehow, living in a cruel nightmare is better than being the dreamers we once were. We forget how much dreaming has saved us from so much pain. We grow up as people we hardly recognise, and we ask ourselves how we ended up here. Then we spend the rest of our lives trying to recapture the same magic we had. Not knowing that after all, it was never truly gone, it just had to be unlocked, unearthed from years of playing a role we were never meant to play. This world forces us to perform. To prove how much we can blend in and fit into the boxes that were never ours to begin with. Innocence requires expression, creativity — it requires bravery. To be different. To be anything and wholeheartedly believe you can. I grew up believing in mermaids, witches, and dragons. I grew up with my head in the clouds, sitting in the sky and never wanting to come down. l had lived in the sky for so long, I didn’t know what it meant to be on the earth again. I often questioned if I wanted to be on the ground, and how it would be so much easier if I stayed in the sky. With the sun and the moon as my closest companions, I marveled and awed, and I fell in love more times than I can think of. My reality stayed there, and my dreams of a better world, a sane world, a colorful world stood on its own. It was always something that existed. But when we are in that state of being, our imagination never stops, and we become enamored with everything our minds tell us.
They said protect your energy, but no one ever talks about how easily energy can be tarnished. When you connect back to that magic again, people will start to be infatuated with you, a level of lust that eats you alive, bone by bone, piece by piece. Almost animalistic because something so beautiful can never exist in this world, and when you're returning to that beauty inside of you, the same beauty that was intrinsic to who you are, that’s when the fangs come out. That is when the ugliness comes out, and the darkness then envelops you once more.
Protect it just like how a parent protects their child
Protect it like you have nothing left to lose
It has to be seen. It has to be experienced. Probably not by all, but choosing who does is where the true magic truly lies.
xx
w/ love
N.A