It makes me Smile

As I reminisce and revel in my "past"--I put it in quotations, because it's quite ridiculous to even mention my past as my past, because it's connotation insinuates that I have a "past" worth mentioning when in reality, I don't, really. That's besides the point. I can't help but smile at a story I remember from when I was "younger"--the aforementioned blurb applies here as well.

I was working at our local amusement park with my best friends, who still live up to that title today: Gabrielle and Natasha are their names, and we were so excited to be working, not only would we have our own personal "grown-up" income, but we were working together.We were super excited!  We were ticket takers, so all we had to do was stand at the entrance of a ride, and make sure everyone had a stamp on their hands. Why we were called Ticket Takers never dawned on me...till now? Weird. 

It was a scorching summer in the dry-dead-heat of 110 in the shade of Utah. Although when I was 15 it didn't seem so hot, but now, thinking back...it was really hot. On a random day of the week I was scheduled to work one of the roller coasters. At this specific attraction you had the pleasure of standing in a box, literally a box. You'd think that because you were covered by some sort of apparatus it would be less hot. Think again. Not only was it hotter than an oven heated to 450 degrees, the heat also perpetuated the smell of cigarette butts, and the smell of pee from who knows where.

I stood at my post in the box and watched as person after person shoved the outside of their hand in my face as I gave them not so attractive looks. Until one day, a group of men. I repeat men. Not boys. Not guys. Men. Approach the glorious box with smirks, each one a different adorable smirk which is credited to their personality I would assume. There was three of them. They went on, through the turnstile. Staring. 

As I continued gasping for my breath in the heat of the dry air, and wiped the beads of sweat from my brow. The sun was beating on my back as it began to set, and as I stood facing forward, diligently keeping to my duties. I hear some rustling behind me, but pay no attention to it. 

It was at a moment when there were no patrons in my line. 

I looked...

on the ground sat a single rose. I grabbed on to it, and smelt it. It was refreshing and romantic. I couldn't help but smile, and I smiled the rest of the night.

Long story-short: eventually the men came back around and explained that they had left the rose, and got my number. It led to nothing, (there are details I'm not at liberty to share online) but I share this story, because it is so vivid in my mind, and it led to me think, why?

It's nothing really substantial or life changing. It wasn't something that forever changed my ideas or beliefs of anything. It was just a rose, some random man left at my feet. A man, I never saw again.

I guess for a 15 year old it was some sort of fantasy that had come true, and I kept that rose until it died. Smelling it, and holding it, and reminding my self of the fairy tale I was now living, and it lasted for at least a week. The bliss of...a land far, far away. Perhaps that is why I remember it. Not because I was in love, or because some man noticed me. Perhaps I remember it because like many fairy tales: it just makes me smile.

Now, at the age of 20 I find myself in a grown up world, where every adult tells me to never believe in those fairy tales. That Sleeping Beauty, Belle, Ariel, Cinderella, and Snow White were all stupid little girls who were created out of the mind of some shut in writer, who wanted to make things up. They are lies, people tell me, but I refuse to agree with them.

I don't believe that fairy tales come true. I am not that naive, but I do believe that I can create my own fairy tale, everyone can. We all can have our moments where every step is enchanting and every moment unreal, but it is in our imperfect lives that we must find those moments of happiness and adolescent storybook endings. I hope one day I find someone who will sweep me off my feet (and I will do the same in return) and we'll live in an uncharted kingdom. With acres and acres of land, and we'll have spontaneous performances of song and dance. We'll give each other roses, and true loves kiss, and essentially, someday:

We'll live Happily Ever After.



"Smile" :) 

The Story I'd Never Tell

My first "Love"
Give of your heart, and taketh of nothing till it is given back to you.


It was 2005 I had finally come into mine own skin (or so I thought), and all because I had experienced love for the first time. I remember when I first met Fernando (his name is changed for privacy purposes), it was in our choir class in 8th grade. He was very popular and all the ladies loved him. I didn't take much liking to him, at first, because he wasn't my type--as everyone called it.

I was dedicated to one thing and that was singing. So, I didn't pay much attention to anyone else other than the choir director: she was crazy. There's really no other sufficient descriptors other than she was crazy, which I found to be a normality among all choir teachers. Perhaps it's a requirement before one can receive their degree. Something like Crazy Tactics 1010, and you progressivly get crazier so you have to take Weird 2010, and Supercalifragiwhatothewhawhawho 3000 until you finally can graduate with Insanity 4052 which is obviously a thesis class in which you actually are insane, in a classroom.

Anyways, Fernando was my first love, and I knew he was my first love because he's the first boy to ever utter those three lovely short-breath phrases. Sigh.

It was a Saturday afternoon, late fall, very close to winter. Probably October. We had exchanged numbers, and he had called me fairly early in the morning, and we chatted all day. It was really quite cute, because I would have to go do something and then call him back. We would talk. Then, he would have to go do something, and then call me back. It went on like this until at least 11 at night. Which when I was in eighth grade was considered rebellious. I'm wild. I know.

Finally I said "Hey, Fernando I've got to get some sleep."

To which he replied, "oh okay. I love you."

I'm not sure what happened at that moment, but I did not catch "I Love You." All I heard was a mumble. So I asked him to repeat himself. To which he got embarrassed, and refused to repeat it. I egged him on to PLEASE repeat what he had said, to which he finally succumbed...

"I Love You." He said.

To which my first reaction was crusty, because I had been talking to him for A DAY? How could one fall in love with someone in a day, but I couldn't resist but to return the sentiment, and I went to sleep with the admonition that he and I were to be married the next day.

This happened Saturday, on Monday Fernando ignored me at every corner in the hallway. He refused to speak to me in class, and I virtually never saw him again. I had no idea what to do with myself. I was confused. I was taken aback, I was pretty much everything, but hurt, because being the 15 year old that I was I still believed in every fiber of my being Fernando loved me, and why? Because he said so...

In March of that same year, I decided enough was enough. He told me he loved me so why was he not constantly at my side? Also, I found out in January of that same year he had been romantically "involved" with my best friend. So, I said enough was enough. I confronted him via text message and I said, "FERNANDO how are you?"

He said, "Fine."
I said, "Do you like me, still?"
He said, "No."
I said, "Did you ever like me?"
He said, "No."

This is the point where my heart shattered to pieces, and I cried, and I died, and I fell apart.
I was as many would call a hawt mess. I remember specifically crawling under my bed, covering up in  blankets, and crying, hard.

Looking back at it all. I find it was ridiculous. I mean, "love" at 15? That wasn't love. It wasn't until many years later that I was reflecting on that moment in life that I found that I was never in love, or maybe I was in love, but I was "in love with being in love." I found out soon enough that this is not true love.

I mock myself at the silly things I thought when I was younger and this was one of those things, but although it was something that has become somewhat of a joke in the storybook of my past. It has forever changed the way I view myself, the way I view love, and how I view the world. That may seem a bit expansive, but it's true.

Fernando was the first man who said he loved me, and although he took it back faster than an Olympic track athlete could run the short-distance long jump. He still said it. He was my first, and sometimes I wish he were my last...