When I was thirteen, I tried keeping a journal. Writing was my favorite thing to do, but it didn’t work out. I always thought that writing would be the place where I could get away from the real world. I felt that the way to go when I had my own problems would be to get caught up in someone else’s. Being that I had hardly any close friends who told me their problems, I had to create my own characters and their own problems. Ever since I was six, I’d write stories and poems every day. For my thirteenth birthday, I’d gotten my own writing journal. I remember ripping the brightly wrapped paper, uncovering the smooth cover, lock, key and matching pen. I was at bliss the moment I laid eyes upon it. I felt as if I had everything I could ever want in my hands at that moment. I’d started staying up until one in the morning, making up stories where I was center stage. In some of them, I was a beautiful princess, locked away in a high tower, guarded by a massive fire breathing dragon. Other times, I was a damsel in distress, tied on a railroad track by an evil villain. In all of them, I was saved by a handsome knight in shining armor, who just so happened to be the boy with the mesmerizing pale blue eyes who sat in front of me in math class. By the age of fifteen my journal was running out of pages but I couldn’t stop writing. I’d bring my journal to school and write in it when the teacher’s back was turned. Then one day, the journal was gone – stolen by the boy in front of me in math class. He’d taken it out of my hands when we were about to leave, running off, his beautiful eyes delving into the wordy depths of my journal.
For the next few days I hid at home, hoping that he wouldn’t recognize himself as the wonderful hero in all of my stories. A week passed and I was having a hard time making my parents believe that I still had a cold after all those days. As I walked back to school that day, I wondered what it would be like if he did know that I liked him. Perhaps my fairy tale life would come true and we’d get married, living happily ever after. When I walked into the classroom, my nerves kicked in and I once again hoped that he wouldn’t know that I had feelings for him. Sadly, he did. That’s the day I realized that he wasn’t the person I always thought he was. He wasn’t kind, considerate or even the least bit nice. All those years I was in love with those pale blue eyes, not him. I was so infatuated with the idea of him, the hero that I’d write about in my stories, that I never got to know the real him. From that day on, I stopped writing.
Years later, I did get my journal back, when he realized what a jerk he’d been and apologized. I never did continue writing though, after all, I did get my fairy tale life when I married my true knight in shining armor.