Just A Girl


Once upon a time, there lived a beautiful, smart, talented princess in a land where there were no such things as hate and death and poverty, war and greed and tears and heartbreak. Everyday was a bright one, brimming with possibilities, and nothing bad ever happened. At least, nothing worse than a glass of spilled milk. The beautiful, smart, talented princess could daydream, and believe that her happy imaginings might come true.

Then, one day, she Grew Up. The princess discovered that she wasn’t really a beautiful princess at all. She wasn’t as smart or talented as she had once perceived herself to be. She was just a girl, only a girl. The girl found that happiness is hard to reach, harder to grasp, and nearly impossible to hang on to for long. She learned that there are people who will never love her (no matter how much she loves them, or tries to make them love her), and some who will even hate her.

Things happened, worse than spilled milk---things that cannot simply be mopped up and forgotten. The girl got hurt, and realized that not everyone is nice; when you make yourself vulnerable, there are some people in this world who will hurt you with it. The girl learned that people really do die, and never come back. She discovered that things are nearly always complicated, love hurts, and sometimes, it takes all the strength a person has to cry, just cry, because there’s nothing else you can do.

Most of all, she found that nothing is perfect. Not even herself. Especially herself. In her eyes, she suddenly had many, many flaws. Her reflection in the mirror wasn’t as beautiful as she remembered it to be. She made mistakes, a lot of them, all the time. Bad habits, wrong answers. Unfavorable qualities. Suddenly, she wasn’t anything she’d thought she was, least of all, perfect.

But that’s just how it goes, isn’t it? Eventually, the fairytales in life diminish. They fade from existence, and life hurls the cold hard truth at you. And it takes strength. It takes strength to pick yourself up after that brick of truth has been flung so startlingly through your window, shattering the world you thought you saw through it, thrusting you to your knees.

That’s all you can do, though: just pick yourself up again, sweep away the pieces; start over. Start over only to have it happen again and again. That’s what life is about: how many times can you be knocked down, how many times can you stand back up. How many times until you can’t.

So maybe that’s what happens when you die. As in, when you stop truly living. Maybe you go through life being thrown down and getting back up until one day, you just can’t. Not again. You’re down and you can’t get back up and that’s when you die. You may still be breathing, blinking, talking, walking, and your heart may be beating, but your soul is not alive. Your spirit is not alive. You’re alive but you’re not living.

If that’s the case, then give me strength, because I want to live long and well. I want to be fully alive in my soul and spirit until the day my heart stops beating. That’s how I want to die; I want to die fully alive. So give me strength. I’m going to need it. Because I have a feeling I’m going to be pulling myself up off the floor a lot.

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Alexandria Dora Shay Wilkerson