shards

5.0 reality

Remember that time when you were young, when you'd look up at the sky – at the clouds swimming in the blue sea above your head – and think about how wonderful it all was. When you saw those big fluffy clouds that looked so much like floating castles in the sky, you imagined jumping on them. And when the sun casted a golden glow on those white things up above, you imagined a city - a whole new world full of sunlight and dancing and music and happiness.

And you'd wish, one day, I want to go up there and dance on the clouds.

But that day came sooner than you expected, and before you knew it, you were on your first plane ride. Up, up, up – the clouds loomed closer and anticipation swirled in your stomach. What would it be like? Would there be people living in the clouds? Whole towns thriving in the sky?

And then the plane slipped through the floating pillows and it rattled and shook, and it dipped and you felt your stomach drop. You cried, wailing out into the crowded plane full of tightly gripped seat handles and eyes squeezed shut.

Finally, it rose above the clouds and you bent forward to catch your first glimpse of the floating city only to be confronted by an empty and endless sky with lazy white clouds drifting silently past below. There was no Kingdom in the sky, no singing or dancing or music or happiness.

Your heart broke and you sat in silence the rest of the trip.

That day, you learned that fantasy and reality are totally different things, and that they do not intermingle. You lived in a world of reality, of fact and non-fiction. The sky cities were fantasies, elaborate delusions that you were tricked into believing by books and your vivid imagination. You had wanted to believe it so much that you were ignorant of the truth.

And now you knew – you knew that you'd never be able to stand on a cloud, never be able to touch the sky or live high above the ground.

And soon you discovered more things, more fantasies that had already been proven false since before you were born: rainbows could not be touched and there was no pot of gold at the end, rain was not the tears of God or of the angles flying above, there was no such thing as unicorns, fairies and mythical creatures, Santa and the Easter bunny were made up by the imaginations of adults, and there was no such thing as magic.

Slowly, this fake world you had built around yourself began to crumble; each brick, each stone – an individual dream. They all toppled to the ground with a thud, resonating in your ears like the haunting melody from your nightmares. You lived in reality now, a place of shattered dreams and forgotten fantasies. It opened its arms to you with a smile, saying, "Welcome" as if it wasn't just about to stab you in the back with the cruel and harsh reality of life the second you turned away. And you slipped into its depth and fell.

Down, down, down. Always falling, always flailing around wildly, desperately trying to grip onto something that would stop your fall. And you would fall like this all your life, up until the day that you'd hit the bottom with a thud, just like those bricks and stones tumbling from your world of dreams all those years ago, and your world would end, except this time, for real.