An Incorrect Picture

When I was little, I used to play dress up in my mother's clothes and try on all of her makeup just wishing to grow up. I would go with her to the department store with the cracked linoleum floors and hide in the clothing racks filled with colorful silk dresses all the while, peeking through the silky curtains marveling at the beautiful twenty-somethings trying on beautiful dresses and skirts and tops the pay for them with their shiny, glossy plastic cards. Oh how I wanted to grow up! I wanted to be able to wear makeup and buy beautiful things with magical cards hand-crafted by the most talented plastic factory in the country. However, when I grew up, I quickly realized how naive I was. Growing up brought on more responsibility and complicated my once simple life. I now find myself wanting to travel back to the days when I wanted to be a princess or when I wanted to have tea parties with the stuffed animals that were once so comforting and are now all but a distant memory in the clouded, thought-filled mind of mine. When my mother told me to stay young for as long as I could, I refused to believe for she couldn't possibly be correct. However, I see now that she only knew too much and tried to keep me from making the same mistake her ad several others before had made. She didn't want me to grow up and be thrust into realization that the world was much crueler than the loving and hopeful world I had imagined. She was trying to save her young, innocent child from the pain the world so graciously bestows upon those who understand what pain really is. Why did I want to grow up? That naive little child is now gone and has been replaced by a woman who knows how cruel the world really is. A woman who knows what pain is and how truly awful it is. A woman who now only wishes to go back. A woman with hope that the world will one day change for those who are just like she was. Just a girl with an incorrect picture of what the shattered world really looks like. Just a girl with unconditional and everlasting hope.