Life is like climbing up a wall which doesn’t exist; you’re never going to win. You can try as hard as you like but that wall just keeps on stretching up in your minds eye. It is your Everest, and for forever you will be staring up that godforsaken wall, hoping it will shrink as you age and grow, but it doesn’t, it grows with you, getting thicker by the second.
When you were little you had a cubby house in the back of your yard. It sat prim and proper, with pink mouldings that called for you to sit under them. You were a princess that ruled over the strange and magical land that was the space from the back fence to your back veranda. You would sit, garbed in frills and ribbons, watching over your lands. Mr Teddy – and his accomplices – sat with you, thick limbs brushing the small tea set you laid out perfectly for them. It was hardly fair, sitting silent; their buttoned and stitched lips could never speak to you the way you wanted. Is that why you left them behind? You walked away from your kingdom, shedding the ribbons and frills that made you princess. Sitting ever silent, blankly judging, your playthings waited, unheard cries beckoning for your return.
Did the faeries mourn? Those that you knew lived in the dew drops of every morning, glittering in ephemeral beauty. They shone with all the colours you wished to have, young eyes hardening in jealousy. To imagine them in the sky, intricate wings unfurling with the hope of a new dawn, it horrified you. To never fly, to crouch, ever waste-full in the mire that was earth sickened you, even so young. You were meant for more.
Your first dance was a revelation. They had never taught you this in school, much less at home, where stuffy teachers and ancient minded parents kept you rendered in their past mistakes. You wore hard black shoes, your reflection literally bobbing back out at you. So perfectly you stood, perhaps the only one from your class to dress up. A far cry from the silent banquets in your cubby, this was loud and invasive. The boys shouted at one another, the girls screeching and whirling with each other, tripping over their own feet in innocent abandon. Here were your future people, so very classless, mingling with such utter ignorance of your right. You should have been the centre of their lives, you were made for it. However, you were resourceful, not unintelligent, you knew what and who you were. That attention would be yours in a matter of days.
Throughout your teenage years you grew, outstandingly bright against the dank average of your background. Intelligent and moral, sticking to the personal code you had created. Like those faeries you idolised in spite of yourself, you would glitter and glow before those unlike you, but you would never be touched, almost invisible to the tangible world of men.
By graduation you were a triumph, standing proud, luminescent before your peers, your family. You had hopes, high hopes, of gain and wealth, and were not going to lose them to any stupid mistakes. Focused and determined you flogged through your years, slipping your way up the rungs of society. They loved you, the classed and out-classed alike, to them you were the faerie, fey and aloof, flitting from one necessity to the next, no need for the solid blocks of others.
You had loves, and heartbreaks, all steps to your goal. Or so you told yourself. Each one still stung. The clinging threat of hopeless abandon stayed, coming back again and again, tearing though your barriers and leaving you sobbing under the quilt your mother stitched. She watched you, kept her eye on her baby girl. Holidays and weekends you ventured home, watching your mother bake the intense tastes of home. She was your rock, standing firm in every crisis. Without her your wings might never have uncurled.
Slipping out the back, a rundown jungle of left over weeds ran rampant. Ripped jeans and a simple singlet were your royal gowns; no escort led your way. Sitting silent, staring accusingly sat Mr Teddy, mouldy and wretched in the years of your treachery. His partners, his friends, were gone, torn away by time and nature.
Sitting quietly - on the princess chair you had forced your father to buy -you looked over your life. All the while you berated yourself, hands circling Mr Teddy, cleaning his monocle on the greying edges of your singlet. You were so cliché, sitting back there alone, mourning the life you didn’t lead and all the options you once had. You knew you were cliché, though, much like you had known you were average. It was okay, you could change that.
After all, if the faeries could still fly out from their dew drops late in the night, why couldn’t you?
