Ever since I was little I liked to play these elaborate games of pretend, and even as I’m supposed to be an adult, I still do the same things.
I don’t mean this to sound like a sob story here, but I grew up poor. My mother was a single mother of five children under the age of twelve, who had to feed and dress every single one on a government pension. She was also forking out for a private Catholic primary school at the time, too, although fat lot of good that did.
If it weren’t for hand-me-downs and the generosity of people within that Parish I would likely have been a lot worse off than what I was. We never went hungry, exactly, but we didn’t have “snacks” as kids or anything. You got an apple for morning tea, a Vegemite or jam sandwich for lunch, and then dinner. I didn’t have chocolate or sweets unless it was Christmas, and we got one chocolate egg for Easter.
I think that’s why binging is such a huge problem with me whenever I’m somewhere that has those “special foods”. I didn’t have a scrap of that as a kid and as soon as it’s offered I’m a bull in a china shop, shoving everything into my mouth. But I digress…
These games of pretend were just extended day-dreams. The kind that everyone has.
When I was a kid it was stuff like, what it would be like to turn up at school in sneakers with flashing LEDs in the sole (remember those?) or if I turned up with waist-length blonde hair and a winning smile with sudden ballet dancing skills and a voice like a lark. Or if I flew in there on a broom a la Harry Potter, dressed in a wee Hogwarts uniform and brandishing a wand (because who gives a toss about the Statue of Secrecy when you’re a nine-year-old witch with ‘Skillz’ amirite).
Oh yeah, and I was totally Severus Snape’s daughter and somehow Harry Potter’s half-sister at the same time. Figure that one out, because I sure as hell can’t.
I still do that now. But it’s a lot less fun. Barring the daydreams were I go on cozy coffee dates with Chris Evans who then promptly proposes to me on the spot.
What if I turned up to college with an entire new hairstyle and colour, dressed in the latest fashions, a face perfectly made-up, carrying a rose gold iPhone 6 Plus, with straightened, whitened teeth and weighing 15 lbs less? What if I turned up to class all dressed like that, in a sexy black Bugatti Veyron? What if I suddenly knew how to answer every question in every test and got an unbreakable string of 100%s?
Would people find me more amiable then? I feel like they would. They’d be more open to talk to me. They would tell me how beautiful I looked. I wish people said that to me. Said things that weren’t “you’re pretty until you open your mouth” and “you’re really annoying, you know that right?”.
Suddenly it’d be, “you look so amazing!”, “you look nice today!”, “how did you do it?”, and everything else everyone says to each other. They’d ask to add me on FaceBook and Snapchat and Twitter and Kik.
Could you just imagine it? I’ll paint a picture:
People would love me like that. Eighty-eights pounds and on-point with everything. Like damn. Even I could tolerate myself like that.
Sometimes I pretend that a really hot amazing person is waiting for me when we all exit the classrooms after the lesson. Who is this super amazing / attractive / nice person waiting for? That Turtle Dove bitch? WOAH!
It’s Chris Evans. Chris Evans is waiting for me. Or better yet, Steve Rogers.
Sad, isn’t it? The self-indulgent daydreams of a poor fat girl who wears hand-me-downs and has holes in her shoes. The annoying obnoxious girl with no friends and nothing to make up for her many faults. The girl who no-one sits next to on the bus, the girl with an old phone, glasses, and an ugly smile. The girl with a half-life ahead of her, who can’t have babies or a pain-free week without something going wrong.
It’s just nice sometimes to escape in these daydreams because my life is so lonely and empty. That I could get everything I wanted, like a proper haircut and clothes that nobody but me has worn. Straightened teeth so I could feel what it’s like to smile properly for the first time ever and not worry about my overbite. What it’s like to have people want to be friends with you because you’re a person worth being friends with?
What’s that like, to be the person people think are amazing?
What’s it like to be beautiful?
What’s it like to wake up in the morning and not hate yourself?
What’s it like to be the centre of attention for all the good reasons?
I’d like to know; if only just for a day. Because the happiness it would bring me would make everything else seem less damning and much more manageable.
Turtle Dove 