Once upon a night,
There lived a girl who's heart was dying
(or so she thought)
Each heave of her chest, like a petal off a wilting flower
Her tears watering the earth,
A futile attempt at keeping the flower alive.
One night, her father came to her and told her about something called,
THE HERO'S JOURNEY
He opened the pages of her sketchbook and drew for her a diagram,
like the pages of every fairytale resided within her own spiral bound book
and he told her that every story,
from the brother's Grimm to George Lucas and the steel bikini,
followed the same basic pattern.
The protagonist, be it Luke Whiney Skywalker or little red mermaid,
had to get from A to B,
and to do this,
had to first begin the journey.
Everything goes perfect in the beginning,
the sun is shining on their perfectly drawn faces as soft as a mother's kiss,
until the back of mother's hand
kisses that beautifully drawn face-
and then takes your blades away and cries on the floor of your room,
the decline.
Oh yes, things get bad.
But not so bad that Luke can't handle it right? I mean come on he's got the most dangerous weapon in the galaxy-
until he loses it.
This is when my father's hand began to droop,
as he drew the worst part of the journey
the pit of despair.
This is the part where Red gets eaten,
Where Luke and his "pitiful rebellion"
seem done for,
Where I am crying myself to sleep every night, hating my body and dreaming of blood and shiny sharp things.
Where addiction forces it's way into the caverns of your heart, forcing out the people that you love
Where you are blind to everything around you but how beautiful everyone else seems
Where time doesn't really matter anymore, Where the way to the hospital is more familiar than the way to your best friend's house,
Where the reaper tucks you into bed at night and you're not sure if its your dear mother sneaking in to check on you at night or death come to take you away.
Hope fades, like a match in a glass,
You choke and scream for oxygen as you walk with your friends, with a porcelain mask on your face,
Nothing is there anymore,
But the voices, and the addiction.
This is when my father says to me,
"And sometimes this isn't even the worst part. Sometimes, every time you think its getting better, it pulls you right back down."
Your own darkness ties a string to you,
laughing as you climb the walls of the pit
and then yanking you back down.
This is when the hero feels that all hope is lost.
Until something breaks the glass,
and the match takes the oxygen like your aching lungs,
Be it your friends or family,
Your art or your therapist,
Even something as simple as a good nights sleep,
These things come together and they build a ladder for you out of the pit.
You're battered and bruised,
You're tired and weak,
But you've just got to climb.
Then my father tells me,
"From a physics perspective,
its quite a taxing task, because in order to make something change its direction,
You have to put energy into it. That's why you can coast a bike along the road without peddling, the bike wants to go where it's going. But if you want to change the way the bike is moving, you have to apply energy."
So now the hero applies energy,
And the flame burns brighter than ever
They climb out of that pit and collapse-
At point B.
Now our hero has won, and is equipped with new tools to battle greater and grander things,
and continue being a hero.
They didn't die down in the pit,
(Unless you're Boba Fett but he's not the hero)
and they didn't let anything beat them.
Then my father says to me,
"And you're better. You may not think you're getting better, but you are."
And then, with the story book finished and new petals blooming already,
My father wraps me in a hug and says,
"You're my hero."
