(no subject)

[mrissa]

The problem with kindly lies is that, as always, false currency drives out true. When you are a sullen and be-pimpled pre-teen plagued with growing pains and glasses that constantly slip, who has had to pull her tights up over a bulky bandage because she sprained her ankle trying the amazing athletic feat of walking backwards, and grown-ups boom, "Don't you look nice!", the sound of it stays with you for a decade or more after, and it takes a few sharp metaphorical blows to the head to realize that now they really mean it when they say something similar.

And one morning you sit putting stamps on your short story submissions and thinking that you should probably designate a shelf in the new music room bookcase (when you get one) for some of the magazines and books you've got stuff in, because the library tables are overflowing a bit, and it'll only get worse in the summer, and possibly one or two examples would be more tasteful than the entire collection. And it hits you that all those times people said, "I know you can do this," it was because they knew you could do this. Because you can, you are. But it sounded so much like, "You can be anything you want to be!" and, "You are limited only by your dreams!", and you knew those were lies. You couldn't have been just anything.

But you can be this.

Oh.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Usually "that was a nice story" means "your story bored me." Alas.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

When I say something is nice I mean that I like it. I'm shy about showing exuberance - I've been exposed to too much hype on tv and in the media and am generally suspicious of it.

You make very good points in this post. I think I have yet to make that realization that I really can do the things my best friends have always told me I could do. I know I can't be a ballerina. Not without something like a whole new body. :)