I once dreamed about happiness. In my imagination, I saw brides and grooms dancing together at their weddings and having children and living happily ever after. This fairytale of mine was short lived, and only lasted until I was the age of 6. At this time, my parents were getting a divorce so, you could imagine that at my age I had no clue what was going on. I watched my fairytales shatter into pieces each night I woke up to an argument or red and blue flashing lights outside of my bed room window. When you’re a young child, you can’t fully grasp onto the reasons why you start to have nightmares; your parents make it a routine to check under your bed for the monsters, so what can the problem be? I believe that when children start to grow up and are exposed to the real world, that’s when the nightmares start to occur. Our parents tried to shield us from curse words and the truth of the magical characters we celebrate on Christmas and Easter, but that can’t go on forever.
I fully stopped believing in fairy tales at age 11 when I started to comprehend the world. I realized that there are lies, criminal acts, death, tears, and so on.  Nightmares stay with us forever but grow into a different form once we grow up. Nightmares become reality, and they are something that you have to fix. You can’t just wake up and cry for mommy to sleep with you.
Growing up wasn’t hard for me personally, but then again I didn’t pay attention. I noticed the homeless on the streets and the elderly eating alone in restaurants. Those were the times when I started to feel true heartache for others. I remember my friends having financial issues and not really knowing what was going on at the time. We were forced to go with the flow growing up, due to living in fantasy lands and only looking at the good things in life and not the threatening ones. The difference between pessimism and realism is that pessimism is being a complete grouch and only concentrating on bad components of life. Realism is when you accept reality and you don’t try to sugar coat things, you just take them for what they are.
The only fairytales that I dream of now are creating a stable future for myself. My nightmares are now just daily occurrences in life. Although it may be hard growing up, it does teach you about the real word. Sometimes fantasies just don’t make the cut.