Every week, the AWM is excited to bring you stories written by our visitors in our Story of the Day exhibit. Check back weekly for new stories, and visit the Museum to try out our typewriters and possibly be featured here!
Hindsight is 20/20 in this story:
At Christmas, there were five of us — seven if you count Loretta and Greta, who were women and therefore exempt from our foolish drama. By summertime we would all be fractured. I was the second oldest but I knew the least. I did not know how to ask questions or say “I love you,” nor did I understand that not everything had to be about me. I only knew how to drink and how to panic.
Watching the two of them together was the strangest kind of alone I ever went through. When they broke up, I somehow felt even more alone. When I was finally chosen as a mate, I thought I would feel better. Instead I didn’t get what all the fuss was about.
I wish I would have said something in August.
I wish I didn’t go to the ER on New Year’s Eve.
I wish I didn’t open his door on January 2nd.
I wish I never turned 30. It all goes to hell after 30.
We may be dreamers, but we’re not the only ones:
Humans in general are fleeting creatures. Our memories are fragile and quick. We flit from one place to the next like butterflies craving the new kinds of nectar that we find. But at the same time, we expect our time to stay with us. We expect our memory to stay intact, even though that belief in itself is foolish. We have a much higher belief in ourselves than what is realistic. We are dreamers, thinkers, even though our time is fleeting. Humans to their core are unrealistic. But that is what makes us human. We are human because we can think, dream, believe, live. We are the ones who can understand, who can reach beyond ourselves. Every human, whether they are small and weak, or large and strong, can dream. Can think beyond themselves. That does not mean empathy, as many have taken it, but rather ambition, to live beyond simplicity, and to live beyond the normal. To live is to dream.