Okay, so I have this idea that I have had since I was a little girl that no matter how hard I try I can't seem to let go.

I have always been a reader of the magical and the miracles, things that happen that are exciting and new and maybe just the slightest bit (or a lot bit) dangerous or unappealing, and I've cherished those stories most of all. Sometimes, as I've grown older, I've noticed that they don't always have a happy ending. I've grown to accept the fact. It just made it all the more real.

I found myself, a child using books and daydreams to escape our mundane and heartbreaking lives, searching for something to look forward to more than anything. So, I dreamt, as many of us often do, for a place where I could live out my own adventure, where life was no longer mundane and I'd see and experience the magic that I'm still certain to this day exists.

So, I became increasingly sad as I slipped into the magic and wonder and beauty, because I was not to have something like that. Everybody around me told me that the only extraordinary thing in life was god, and that other things were illogical and things only a child such as myself could truly believe. I resented that they called me and my beliefs childish and that they told me I'd stop believing one day. Especially with my parents being incredibly blunt over what they saw as "real" and "fake". I was told from the time that I was three that Santa and the Easter Bunny were only for other children to believe. In fact, I recall once my mother finding me writing my letter to Santa Clause and exclaiming that if she ever caught me writing one again she'd let "Santa" bring all my presents and I'd see he wasn't real when I received nothing on Christmas.

As I grew older, I feared more and more that the time I would no longer see magic comprehensible was just over the horizon. I knew that without my escape and without the belief something magical might happen to me someday, life would become incredibly dull and boring. Despite that, I have not to this day stopped believing in some form of magic. Maybe not Santa, but faeries and witches and things we tell our children of at night. I believe that if you believe in something hard enough, it becomes a reality eventually.


One of the things I have always believed, no matter who has told me otherwise, is that everyone has an adventure.

I don't mean "falling in love" or "embarking on life" or anything like that, I mean getting sucked into a magical realm and fighting side by side with a hero and becoming one yourself. I mean finding out that you're actually something magical yourself and knowing that life will never be the same. I mean somebody counting on you to help the angels slay the demon trying to expunge the human race. I mean somebody in a big blue telephone booth grabbing your hand and winking, insisting that you come on an adventure (though that could be considered scientific for some).

I believe that it happens just once to everyone, sometimes twice if you're lucky, and afterwards you sit there reflecting back on it and, despite how real you knew it was, you sigh and convince yourself that it was nothing more than a crazy dream. A dream that felt so real you could have sworn you were really on the brink of death, fighting that monster, drinking that poison, saving the earth. You sigh and turn over, telling yourself that it's completely illogical, that you were stupid for thinking for a moment that it could have been reality.

You convince yourself that reality was fantasy.

Why?

Because sometimes, reality is too much for adults to handle. So, you go back to your boring, mundane life, searching for nothing, writing off magic as child's play.

You just won't be able to get rid of that seed of truth buried deep in your heart though, the idea that something about it was just too real to ignore, the fact that you feel just the slightest bit stronger because of it. Sometimes, people write down these adventures. Sometimes, you share these things with them, and you smile and close the book and sit there wishing that you had their experience when in reality, your own could be just around the corner.

After all, what is writing if not trying to share the human experience?