The girl loved stories, especially ones about adventure. Sometimes she would dip into her imagination and lose sight of the real world. People generally found this annoying.
Sometimes she would sit and stare, wondering what was missing. Everything around her felt so pointless. She cleaned the kitchen in the morning and loaded the dishwasher. Then she fought two states of traffic on her morning commute. She filed into her cold, dark office and sat at her computer. She accomplished the tasks set before her and did some online shopping. She drove back through evening traffic and collapsed on the couch in front of reality television. She was exhausted from never moving. She was exhausted from never accomplishing anything meaningful. She yearned for the weekend, then spent it at home, hiding from her deteriorating health and growing desperation.
I just want to feel breeze on my skin, my heart pounding from adrenaline, my breath expanding into the vastness of the world. The girl felt lonely for herself at the edges that reached toward this vastness.
But still, everyone said, this is how it works. This is adulting. This is how you pay the debts that you accrued to grow up. It's how we all live. We can buy stuff to make ourselves feel better, but it just piles up more debt that we forever work to chip back away.The wayward girl didn't want stuff, though. When you're on an adventure, you can only take what you really need and are willing to carry on your back. There just isn't room for stuff to soothe your broken dreams. Better than salve, though, is a new dream risen. Dreams don't take up space--they create it--and dreams never feel heavy on our shoulders. Somehow, they make us lighter.
What I am trying to say is, it's better to be than to have. And what the wayward girl really wanted to be was an adventurer.
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