I’m not sure exactly when I first started creating you. Maybe it was back in the earlier days of my youth when I was having a hard time making friends or in the later days when finding it difficult to like the person I saw in the mirror. It was probably somewhere in between those grim moments from which you were born.
You embodied everything I wanted to be and everything I wanted to have. So beautiful that you sparkled and so talented that nothing was ever impossible, you became my own personal Barbie doll.
You became a form of comfort during times of darkness and sadness. At first, I only looked for you on occasion, but as my amount of unhappiness grew, so did the amount of time spent with you.
At some point, that form of comfort turned into greed. It was no longer enough to simply use you as an escape, but I had a growing desire to be you. I too wanted to be so beautiful that I sparkled and so talented that nothing was impossible.
What started as a goal quickly turned into an obsession. I spent the better part of a decade trying to prove that I could be you. To match your amount of talent, I sacrificed sleep for studying and rest for work. To match your level of beauty, I sacrificed food for the gym and self-love for self-improvement. If I worked hard enough, could I be as talented as you? If I starved myself enough, would I be as beautiful as you? If I sacrificed enough, would I be worthy of being called your equal?
In the name of self-improvement, I sacrificed in order to become my own creation, my own fantasy, but it only left me with the bitter taste of blood in my mouth.
No matter how hard or tried or how much I achieved;
Nothing could ever fill what was so empty.
Nothing could satisfy what was never real.
All those years I thought I was chasing a dream but I was chasing happiness.
I believed that if I could become the girl in my story, then her life would become my life. Her beauty would become my beauty. Her talent would become my talent. Her happiness would become my happiness. But no matter how talented I became I could never make that possible.
Because fantasy is simply that. A fantasy.
No matter how real she seemed to me, I could never turn her fantasy into my reality. How could I become what I spent my whole life convincing myself I wasn’t worthy enough to be? How could I feel an emotion I felt I had to earn? How could I ever believe that I was enough if my fantasy was a constant reminder of what I would never be?
Thinking about the years that slipped by while I was blinded by my own creation, I cannot help by wonder how many opportunities of love and happiness slipped by with it? How much happiness did I miss out on because I was always looking somewhere else? Just how much did I sacrifice by never seeing what was in front of me?
If I would have given up the chase years ago, would I have won my own happiness?
