i killed the flower and i killed the fairy

Sometimes a memory will hit me and I will think, ah yes. This is one of the memories that make up the snow globe of who I am. Shake me hard enough, and the memories will fall from me like snowflakes. It only happens occasionally, and whenever it does, I need to sit and think for a moment, undisturbed. I wouldn’t even be able to bear the sound of my own voice. 

You see, I hadn’t meant to grow up. It had just happened, like sunlight creeping through the blinds before you’re ready to wake up.

 I lost my nastiness. I was such an angry child, and now, I’ve become such a docile woman. I would spite my mother if she didn’t buy me the toy I wanted by hiding it in my winter jacket and taking it home with me. Now I cry when she tells me she doesn’t love me. I used to laugh in her face. 

I used to think boys were a joke. I still think they’re a big joke, but I’ve never heard the punchline. I remember a boy named Matthew kissed me in my father’s donair restaurant when I was five. He scrunched up his eyes super tight and thrust his lips towards mine and mashed them together. My dad was outraged, while Matthew’s mom giggled. “They’re just kids, Ray.” I remember she said as my dad shouted that it could never, never happen again. I was so disgusted with Matthew’s kiss that I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand a thousand times over.

And then suddenly I was nineteen, throwing my body at a man just because I was scared he wouldn’t like me enough if I didn’t. I wonder if he wiped his lips a thousand times over after I kissed him when I looked away. 

I would write feverishly as a child. I wouldn’t come down for dinner. I would stop myself from using the bathroom. I had these “scribblers” as my elementary teacher would call them instead of notebooks, and I would clutch a pen in my fist and scribble away. I remember I would get the most cinematic dreams, as if there was a God planting stories in my head. I would wake up as if it was Christmas morning, and write. I was eight years old, and I was in the process of writing my first novel. It had reached seventy-two pages. I asked my mom if she wanted to read it. She asked how many pages I had, and I told her seventy-two. She scoffed, “How do I have time for that?”. I remember shrugging her comment off. Nowadays it takes me days to pick up my laptop again if I’ve written something that someone doesn’t like. Where did that raging fever go? I don’t remember taking any cough syrup for it. Maybe the medicine was too bitter to remember swallowing.

I used to fall asleep with my favourite stuffed animals. I never questioned if I had enough love or not. I had a sparkly unicorn who I aptly named Pinky. She always looked as if she knew what was what and I loved her, and without her saying it, I knew she adored me. I’m twenty-two now, with three failed relationships. I see my friends with their partners, laughing, happy, content, like I’ve never been. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I be loved? When the hell did I start questioning that? What happened? Where did Pinky go? She’s probably in my old room in my parent’s house, in my closet. I haven’t touched her in years. God, I hope she still loves me. 

My little sisters used to actually be little, and I used to actually be a big sister. I miss when Natalie didn’t know more than I did. I miss when Farah wasn’t as serious as she is now. I would race her around the house, her chubby little legs pounding against the floor. I miss when Emily was small enough that I could cradle her against my chest. I would tell them ghost stories before they went to bed. They would pull the covers against their chins, telling me to stop, no, the story is too scary now, but then begging me for another the next night. I can’t remember the last time I told them a story. Did I know the last time that I did, that it would be the last time?

I would walk through the small forest behind our big blue house, and I was convinced that the world was full of secrets. Magical secrets. That I had to be on my toes at all times, because who knows when something magical would appear. An older girl who was the daughter of one of my mother’s friends would show me a trick with some of the purple flowers that grew around the front of our house (I just did a quick google search, apparently these flowers are called “johnny jump ups”). She would peel the petals back very carefully, and in the middle of the flowers were what looked like a tiny fairy with a pale face and a short yellow dress. I was delighted every time, and would run to her with handfuls of the small purple flowers, begging to see more fairies. When she left, I would dizzily wander around my backyard, wondering if there were dragons hidden in the bleeding hearts, or wizards in the tulips.

I tried doing her trick with the same flowers I saw in a park somewhere. I couldn’t get the trick right and all I had in my hands were a bunch of sad, plucked petals. I felt as though I had killed the flower and killed the fairy. 

I know what kind of secrets the world is filled with now. There are many secrets. Secrets that my first boyfriend kept about the girls he was seeing. A big secret like, even if someone says that they love you, even if they say it with a lot of oomph, it doesn't always mean that they do. Secrets about my parents. That they actually never loved each other like I thought they had. Even though I had never even seen my parents kiss (just one time, actually, my dad had come home from a long work trip and my mom rushed to him at the back door, threw her arms around him and kissed him), I had always just assumed they were in love. Secrets about life, that I will actually have to do things I hate doing, like working in customer service, where no magic exists, just to get by. 

Sometimes I wonder if I can go back. Wasn’t it Einstein who said that time wasn’t linear? If I was more like how I used to be, I would simply fold a wishful note under my pillow, cross my fingers, and expect to wake up back in 2010 in the morning. Now, in my listless woman body, I sit still. I watch TV sometimes. I study hard for my classes. I do still read, but it takes effort not to toss the book aside and pick up my phone. I see my friends here and there. I’m moving next week, so I have to start packing already. Finals are coming up too. My heart is still broken. Somebody needs to stop shaking me so the memories don’t fall out of me so fast.