my dream ended when i was born. although i never knew it then, i just held on to something that would never come to pass. dreams really do exist. but in the morning when you wake up, they are remembered just as a dream. that is what happened to me.
i always have the dream to dance like a beautiful ballerina twirling around and around and hearing people applaud for me. when i was young, i would twirling around and around in the fields of wildflowers that grew in my backyard. for hours i would dance as if people were watching me. i would dance so fast that i would forget where i was, until i would hear sounds that reminded me of where i really was. i thought that if i twirled faster everything would disappear and i would wake up in a new place. reality woke me up when i heard a voice saying, "i don't know why you bother trying to dance. ballerinas are pretty, slender little girls. besides, you don't have the talent to even be a ballerina." i remember how those words paralyzed every feeling in my body. i feel to the ground and wept for hours.
we lived in the country by a nearby lake and i would sometimes go there to hide. my parents were never home anyway and i did not like to be at home where i could hear the walls talking of pain. when they were home, my mother just yelled and criticized because nothing was ever perfect in her life. she dreamed of a different life but ended up living in a country far away from the city where she believed her dreams would have come true.i enjoyed hanging out by the water. i would sit there for hours and stare at my reflection. there i was, looked nothing like a pretty ballerina dancer. reflections don't lie. once the waves would come, my reflection was gone. washed away just like my dream to dance. i sat there staring at the water, hoping that my reflection would reappear and be different.
as i grew older, i began to realize that the reason my dream was even born in the first place, was because it was something that was inside of me. the dream i had was never nurtured and cared for, so it slowly died. it's not that i wanted it to die, but i allowed it to die the day i started listening to the words, "you can't do it." when i finally woke up from many years of dreaming, i realized that you can't settle for dancing in the wildflowers, you have to move on to the platform. i still go to the lake sometimes and sit there. looking at my reflection is different now too. when i was young, i looked at how others saw me, now that i am older and wiser; i look at how god sees me.