i want to say so much but i do not know how to speak

[Ylanne Abdul Saleeb]

i never watched all the disney princess stories the way all the other kids did because stuff like that just isn’t real it isn’t real and i know because anyone who would believe crap like that well they’re just lying to themselves it was always a helpless beautiful young lady, absolutely stunning, forced into a situation that seems like an insurmountable obstacle but deep down inside you know it isn’t real it will all work out it will all be okay and the handsome, dashing prince in shining armor on the white horse will ride in and vanquish the monster and then the princess will fall at his feet eternally grateful and it will be happily ever after…

but in real life, it just isn’t like that because in real life the good guys don’t always win and in real life the hero isn’t always a handsome dashing prince in shining armor on the white horse and in real life the victim isn’t always a beautiful and helpless princess…in real life the bad guy isn’t some dreamed-up monster leering from the big screen or a medieval witch in the black robes cackling through tinny speakers…

in real life you could be the hero faced with split-second decisions, tough decisions, decisions that will change the rest of your life but will mean nothing to the rest of the world because you might be a hero for the moment but in the long run your name will be forgotten but what will you choose war is not all glory and honor like they say, the propagandists but you have to make choices in war will you save this group of innocents and let this other group of innocents be killed and is it morally acceptable can you do it and in the end you just do it because you have to do it because there is no other way…

in real life you could be the victim a victim of your own vices a victim of your own fears, letting all that anger and jealousy wash up from within and let it pour over your life and never let you go for even a second, you could be victimized without saying a single word because you know that all you want is to live to get it over with and you know deep down that it’s selfish but you can’t help it because human nature is so often animal nature it’s every man out for himself, eat or be eaten, and reality is harsh, harsh and frightening but sometimes you have to face it, and you can be victimized while thinking you’re at the top of the world and nothing can touch you but the truth is, it has already not only touched you but turned you into a shadow of the enemy itself…

in real life you could be the bad guy too you could be evil incarnate and never even know it you could be so deluded as to dream that you yourself are the salvation of humanity and you can honestly believe with your whole mind that you are doing what is right what needs to be done what god himself wants done, but deep down you know you’re just like everyone else, it’s only the circumstance that is different…

disney isn’t real, happy endings don’t always happen, and what you see on the big screen is never what you see when you open your eyes to what is all around you…

you can call me a cynic if you like, but i prefer the label realist because realism is just embracing what you know to be real deep down inside instead of facing the same sorry disappointment every moment of every day of every year of your entire life…

so you’ve never seen a disney movie, you ask me, not ever, huh?

no, i’ve seen them, i say shrugging, i’ve seen the disney movies and quite honestly they make me sick, but i never know if that feeling i’m getting is because i’m sick with the producers and writers at disney or because i’m sick with humanity all the time or because i’m sick with myself for bothering to strip away the reality when you can never run and hide from it forever because at every turn it’s there staring right into your eyes, staring right at you…

but i don’t say all this to you

what do you do you ask

i dunno…sometimes i walk around the empty city i feel like a ghost, empty, unrecognizable; sometimes i walk the beach and i like the feel of harsh winds slamming into your bare back, carrying swirls of sand smashing into your papery skin, making it all rough, because i can imagine a god up there looking down at me but i can never tell if he’s angry, sad, jealous, happy, gently afraid, or worst of all, disappointed in what i have become, disappointed in what the children he made have become…

it’s a parent’s worst fears realized when the sweet little child of theirs grows up, turns away from all they ever learned, and becomes the antithesis of everything he stands for…when your child becomes everything you’ve ever learned to fear, when your child turns into the thing you hate most, when your child turns into the enemy, when your child embraces what you stand against, when he walks out the door and never looks back not even to whisper good bye or i love you…

no you insist what is your job

i stare at you for a long time your blonde hair is limp buffeted by the wind carrying the salty smell of the sea and with it the distant sounds of sea gulls screaming in desperation for the sustenance they cannot have and the crashing of waves onto the empty sand, empty, empty, empty, as empty and hollow as this human heart…

they say the eyes are the window to the soul and yours are a brilliant azure seem to hold in them every kindness, every childishness, every naivety…

well you ask where do you work

and i want to say something normal, like maybe i’m an illegal immigrant and work below minimum wage somewhere for some rich brats, or maybe i’m a middle class working mom with a job somewhere in the big city, or maybe i’m a college student looking for a few extra bucks as a waitress, or maybe i’m a poor mother with too many mouths to feed looking for work all the time—you’d be surprised by how often that happens…

and even that i’m searching for a job to keep for my career, or i’m still in school…

but anything i say to you will be a lie, because in the end, all we ever think and say to ourselves, we are just lying to ourselves to keep ourselves safe from the fear we all hold, we are afraid of the answers to the questions we are too afraid to even ask ourselves, and so, our life becomes a lie, one gigantic lie that grows and grows until the lie is our life and we cannot live without it and we grow so comfortably within it…the lie is comforting but the truth is frightening…

but in the end i say nothing and you give up and just stand next to me and together we watch a pair of sea gulls, fighting over a piece of discarded chicken, we seem to throw things away so much when there are folks around the globe who would give anything for what is sitting in our back yard in a black plastic bag…they scream and claw at each other, tearing at the food, and soon a crowd of other sea gulls appears and the pair disappears in a flurry of feathers…

so what is this life we say it is a lie and sometimes it is we say it is god’s gift, but sometimes i find that hard to believe, but maybe after all mother was right, maybe the disney ending carries some semblance of reality, but in my heart i know it’s just not true, that life never works out like in the movies, and happy endings are as far from reality as you can get…

we can fall into the dream land and the bedtime stories of an age far away and unreachable, barely remembered except as dust-covered in museums amusing relics of times gone by, or we can turn and face reality, exposing our souls to everything we are afraid to face, everything we are afraid of becoming and knowing, and with that embrace, i tell you, we can change the whole world

shatter your dreams into useless glass shards, turn to the wind, and embrace this reality, and love it enough that you are willing to stand firm, and change everything