Stuck

Today I am Hermione Granger. Today I am smart, assertive, and just the right amount of annoying. Today I walk around with my thick, wavy hair untamed. Today I have a strong sense of wonder. I wonder how people can be so stupid. I wonder how the world can be so inspiring. I wonder if I truly am a girl who isn’t afraid of being bold, a girl who isn’t afraid of getting angry, a girl who isn’t afraid of knowing the answers. 

Yesterday I was Peter Quill. Yesterday I saved the galaxy, listening to my mom’s favorite 70’s playlist. Yesterday I brought my iPod and headphones with me to work and walked home dancing around in the streets while the sky cracked open. Yesterday I found out I liked not caring as much. I found out I liked being just the slightest bit misanthropic. I found out I love my makeshift crowd of friends, I have decent combat skills, and I always want good music playing in the background of my life, as I take on storms bigger than Jupiter’s great red spot.

Tomorrow I think I’ll just be myself. But what does that even mean? When I walk around feeling like Hermione or Peter, no one notices. Maybe you’ll notice my unusually rebellious hairstyle or maybe you’ll notice I have on my headphones, but I can’t do magic and no one uses a Walkman anymore. It’s all on the inside. It’s this feeling that envelops your entire body when you realize you know what you want, but you don’t know what that looks like just yet—at least your brain doesn’t. Your brain is still confined. From the time you realize you can’t leap frog on top of clouds, your mind is stuck in a place it will repeatedly try to get you out of for the rest of your existence. You will leave theaters imagining yourself as these characters in attempt to get out of this uncomfortable place—these smart, witty, fantastically fallible and all too human characters. And perhaps those ideas in wigs, those phantoms of imagination will constitute the parts of you that make you “yourself.” Perhaps they won’t, but they’re a damn good distraction until then. And so, maybe tomorrow I won’t be myself after all. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be Frodo Baggins, because I too sometimes wonder if time can ever really fix things or if I’ll be stuck like this forever.