On the balcony, she looked down upon the kingdom. It was quaint. Too quaint for her taste. The sun sizzled golden on her skin, and she welcomed it with a sigh. She looked down into the garden. Silly little butterflies danced across the Dusty Millers and the lilac bush, which had dried and faded from the July heat. Her attention then focused on the abundant maple tree. What if she were small enough to scamper around inside the darkened forest of branches? The clouds were about as puffy as her under-eyes, and the summertime bugs rejoiced in the ever changing breeze. She couldn’t wait to break free. Someday. Soon. But not soon enough.
Commentary
Ohhhhh boy. This kid was going through it.
At first glance, I want to cringe when I reread this. But I need to remind myself: at this point, I had gone through something quite traumatic for a 16-year-old. Quite traumatic for anyone, honestly. This uninspired, try-hard prose was a form of coping for me; I needed to write to process all the pain I was feeling.
The pain of losing an acting opportunity.
The pain of my first breakup.
The pain of coming to terms with why I had to break up with him.
Growing pains.
. . .
I do think it’s funny to look back at how I perceived myself back then. “She looked down upon the kingdom.” The relentless she/her-ing going on is startling, but there’s something else to be noted here – I didn’t claim to be associated with this kingdom. “The” kingdom, not “her” kingdom. It makes me wonder what I thought my place was in society at that point.
To that end, how much gender-non-conformity was I suppressing?
Yikes.
Read my previous notes app entry here.