Fairytales

It's strange how life has dealt many different hands throughout the years. I was all into reading and writing when I was a kid. Enid Blyton fairytales, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys - all these books accompanied me throughout my childhood. 

Enid Blyton inspired me so much that I took to composing my own little stories when I was just in primary school. Childhood enthusiasm and all got me to take a small little notebook and decide to create my own compilation of fairy-inspired tales in it. I even drew pictures to accompany the stories (though my drawing was quite abysmal even then). I think I got up to about 2 stories and the enthusiasm died off, but not my love for her books. I do wonder where my little book of stories went to. 

I've always admired children books' authors; their creativity for coming up with exciting adventures, fantastical places and heart-warming tales that will remain with you even when you're grown-up and have long known that Fairyland and Toyland do not really exists (but I am still holding my breath to the day I can climb up the Faraway Tree and go off on my own adventures). I always wonder how do they do it? Weren't they all adults much like what I am now? How do they keep their sense of childhood and dreams and yet be able to function in normal society? 

I've tried not to give up on my childhood dreams, but life's not a fairytale. You grow up and realise life expects a lot from you. It's not just a one-way street which tells you "Yep, that's the right way. Can't go wrong with it. Just go straight on." Instead, it throws you curve-balls and hard-balls in so many unexpected ways. You can't just decide to go off on an adventure one day and expect to return and find everything's just as it was when you left.

In a way, I did achieve a childhood dream (well, more like a teenage dream) that was partly inspired by my love for reading, but it's becoming more apparent that it's not cut out for me. Perhaps I am more of a whimsical person who would love to continue living in Fairyland and never grow up (think Peter Pan). But reality's harsh.

Don't get me wrong, I do love what growing up has brought me. It has brought me independence (though I still go running to mummy and papa for all sorts of things), my own hard-earned money, life experience and most of all, the right to legally call my partner of 14 years, my husband.

But now I appear to have reached a point where I am reminiscing about my childhood and thinking of all the little girl dreams I used to harbour. Quite maudlin for someone who just passed the 1/4 century mark not many years back, I would say. But who knows, this may be my baby steps into one of the branches of life's roads which will perhaps lead me closer to what I really dream of. That's one of life's little quirks after all.