What life looks like

When I was a little girl, I had a vision of what my life would be. When I would close my eyes in bed or tune out in the middle of my fourth grade math class, I would see myself: tall, straight, striding, smiling. There would be a palpable air of power as I set out in the early morning sun to some big, beautiful office. I would be beautiful and strong. But I'd still be frolicking in gardens with friends and family. The visions were bathed in golden yellow sunshine, the way Tuscan afternoons in Italy are. There was a lot of laughter. There was a lot of love. And everything was, in short, perfect. That's how it looked like from afar.

And I tried to hold on to that vision for as long as I could remember. I lost it somewhere; if I'm not mistaken, in the vicinity of 14 years old and cold-shouldering my dad. I realized that as you grow up, and life inches closer you suddenly don't recognize it. It rains more than it shines. You're curled up more against the cold and the wet. You're beautiful sometimes. You're ordinary most of the time.

Sometimes comes too often. That's what I learned recently from two friends who gave me another view of life. They were both in my original vision: Louise was with me in the big powerful office, doing big powerful things; Lourdes was with me picking flowers in the Tuscan afternoon. Now both of them are in neither.

Sometimes came too often that it became a habit until it programmed itself into their lives. Like a virus eating away at all the good sense and self-worth and reason, it changed the course that they were taking. It changed the vision. They're still there but they are different from what I was seeing in my dream. Everything's different when you wake up from a dream.

If only there was a magic blanket to wrap them up and keep them from the storm. If only I could get them to get up and walk away, tall and straight, out of those lonely, dark holes they're in and out into the sun. Most of all, I wish there was a way they could experience love again. Love for themselves.

I don't know whether to be happy or sad with the way life changes its look. I don't know wheteher to be sad for me or for them. Because my vision changed? BEcause they changed? Because my vision of them changed? Do I make them fit into my vision? Or do I change my dream so they can fit into it again?

I wonder if I'll recognize life as I saw it as a little girl, if it stared me in the face again?