BELIEVING AGAIN

Purple Wings Silhouette wallpaper, originally uploaded by gbrummett.

I remember a time when I felt immortal. I thought Peter Pan was real and that, if I looked really closely, I'd be able to see the fairies of Neverland out my airplane window. My little sister was the first mate as we fought pirates and pretended to be princesses. Those pirates never had a chance against us. We didn't need help, but we always dreamed who our prince would be to whisk us away from the kingdom of suburbia.

I was determined and ready to conquer the world. Then, I grew up. The confidence of my kidness turned into teenage trepidation. Suddenly, the walls of my high school were much more enormous than the world had felt as a child. I went from being the kid that could take on anyone in tetherball to being a girl who tried to get in and get out--visible to invisible in the flash of a few precious years of innocence gone by.

There was time when my weight didn't matter, I liked my freckles, and proudly showed off bruises from climbing trees. What do you think would happen if we all took the things that we hated about ourselves and kicked those thoughts to the curb? We are all still those fierce pint sizes princesses, if we are brave enough to let them show. Maybe next time I'm on a plane, I will look extra hard at those clouds in the sky. I think I believe in fairies again, at last.