woah dream big

During my freshman year of high school, now nearly eight years ago (!!!), my good friend Epiphany and I began writing in our so-called Notebooks (creative, I know), which, by the end of our high school career, numbered well over twenty. Those Notebooks were, come to think of it, basically our lifeline throughout those typically tumultuous high school years. Instead of releasing our teenage angst in more physical or visible ways, we turned to our pen and paper. The pages of those Notebooks are filled with scribbles and doodles and long, long letters. They are some of the most hilarious and also heartbreaking pieces of writing you'll ever see.

The last time I was home, in late September, I drove out to see Epiphany. When I got to her new place, I saw that she had lugged out the storage box in which she'd kept all of our Notebooks. For a few minutes, we were silent, just reading over what we had written and reminiscing. Then we began reading aloud certain passages to each other, and pretty soon we couldn't stop laughing.

I was struck by a few things. We wrote about the same things over and over (and over). From year to year, the themes of our Notebooks stayed the same: boys we loved (and who, most often, did not return our ardor), girls we didn't like, and how much we hated our *insert body part here*. It's so funny to read things like this, now, after having seen a bit more of the world that's out there, and to realize how narrow the mindset of a high-schooler really is.

Yet I was also struck by the prevailing sense of optimism and positivity that runs through those Notebooks. Sure, we despaired over the size of our kneecaps and agonized for weeks about who would ask us to Homecoming. But because we were sharing our writings--our thoughts, our fears--with each other, we were able to support each other. Each complaint from one side was swiftly negated by the other: "SHUT UP you're beautiful and you KNOW IT," etc, etc.

We shared our thoughts and our fears, yes, and we also shared our dreams. We dreamed of bigger and better things, the two of us. At one point, we were going to be successful violinists-turned-magazine editors-turned-superstars, taking New York (and, by proxy, the rest of the world) by storm. Okay, so maybe things haven't turned out quite like we'd dreamed. But that doesn't mean that we have to give up on those castles in the sky, right? We just have to adjust them a little bit to match the reality at hand, right?

A lot of people say they do their best thinking in the shower. I do my most random thinking in the shower. Today, I was thinking about what my answers will be when journalists from Vanity Fair come to administer the Proust Questionnaire. In case you live under a rock, VF's PQ subjects are, essentially, living legends. In the back of my mind, an annoying little voice was whispering, "Faustyna. Get outta here. You're not going to make it big! It's too late...especially since you're still so lost." Well, you know what, Annoying Little Voice? I don't think it's ever too late to dream big. Maybe that's naive...maybe so. But I'd rather hold on to some fragment of a dream than resign myself to a static, complacent lifestyle.

Call me crazy, but I still have a dream.