Where Are The Brakes On This Thing?!?!

         Okay. So there you are, sitting alone in your room (or not so alone if you have a roommate or a younger sibling) and you’re trying to fall asleep and you keep thinking about “that guy” and imagining a vast array of scenarios where he’ll sweep you away to a far away castle and make you the queen of some unknown country like Genovia or whatever. And then, you wake up in the morning and you check your phone and he hasn’t even texted you like you promised yourself he would and you really don’t wanna text him because that isn’t how the scenario is supposed to work out and if you’re the one to text him first than you can never know if he actually wants to talk to you or if he is just being polite and doesn’t wanna not respond. So, instead of doing anything proactive, you sit in your room all day, constantly refreshing your phone as if it is actually gonna make a difference, and stalking your (and when I say your I totally mean his) Facebook, seeing that once vibrant image of happily ever after slowly fading off the movie screen of your brain until you can’t even fathom how you had been able to see anything at all. BUT THEN…you see him randomly at some place, like when you step out to get lunch or something, and then you’re like “oh my gosh this is so it! It is so about to happen” and he gives you a hug and you melt away in his arms and then, even though there isn’t a marching band and a parade that he has hired to profess his love for you while he is playing a song he wrote on his guitar, you go back to your room in your rainbow and sunshine powered car with a fresh batch of movie magic endings to your non-existent love story. And, just like a shampoo bottle’s instructions, you continue to repeat.

            Now, you would think that the brain would catch on to the fact that what your dreaming of and what is actually happening are two strikingly different realities and would, in fact, be able to decipher the difference between what you have decided will happen and what really is happening for everyone else. I mean, seriously, it shouldn’t be this difficult to look out at the world and realize that the chocolate love river and the cotton candy clouds you are certain exist aren’t being seen by anybody else.

            Sure, your friends can tell you that you’re getting way ahead of yourself, you know like that stupid roadrunner that keeps on sprinting even though the cliff ended like 15 minutes ago. Goodness! It’s almost ridiculous how, no matter what everyone around you keeps screaming, you just keep on living in your dream world and like the little engine that could, your freaking imagination continues chugging up that mountain of disappointment saying to itself “I think I can. I think I can” until it has drowned out all the friendly (and much more sane) advice of the other trains smartly taking a less treacherous path. Unfortunately, however, this little engine can’t actually control the things it’s claiming and seeking to control. Yeah, you can keep pushing yourself forward, but at the end of the day, if someone else made the track a dead end, you’re still not gonna get where you wanna go.

            Guess that’s the price we pay to live in a society where people have (at least in theory) free will. Like, you can do everything right, play the game perfectly, flirt like a freaking pro, but that doesn’t necessarily affect the path that other people have made for themselves and you, inevitably, have gotten stuck on. I mean, sure you’re the so-called captain of your own train, but if you can’t make a drop off at someone else’s station it doesn’t matter how fast you get there (or even the climb for you Miley fans) because you’re never gonna be able to manipulate the train schedule of someone else’s reality.

            Basically, you can dream all night long and wish the whole day away, imagining the next big Hollywood blockbuster romantic comedy in which you play the naïve, but gorgeous heroine and your latest “that guy” takes on the super hot, but doesn’t know it, soft, sensitive, nerdy hero, but when push comes to shove your just gonna be disappointed by the reality that has been molded around you by everybody else’s agenda. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to have a fantasy life, it just sucks when every day turns into a disappointment because it couldn’t possibly live up to the expectations that have been set for it. Sure, your little engine that could made it all the way to the top (woohoo!) but, don’t forget, what comes up must come down, and free-falling from that hill of fantastical romance into the pit stop of the real world is a wake-up call that isn’t worth all that hard work it took in the first place.

            XOXO

                          E