the same

"I'm not a bit changed--not really. I'm only just pruned down and branched out. The real ME--back here--is just the same." -- Anne Shirley

I've been re.reading the Anne of Green Gables series. Actually, reading wouldn't be the correct verb. I've been devouring them like a whale devours plankton. They always bring me back to such a refreshing and innocent place in life. It's a place full of hope, spirit and ambition, where failure is a possibility, but not trying is never an option. Theses stories are infused with wishes and dreams and all good things that are attainable should one choose to stay firm and true to their beliefs. Thy exude optimism and romance, morals and high standards. Simply, they hold the bright purity of our childhoods.

In my youth, I held Anne Shirley on a pedestal. To me, she embodied the perfect being. Full of ambition and whim, cheer and enthusiasm, she was a person to be imitated. I remember myself as a small fifth.grader, yearning for her "auburn hair" and "starry gray eyes." The freckles, which abounded on my brown face easily were not of wont but tolerated for Anne Shirley also was freckled.

It's been sixteen years since those yearnings, but little has changed in the want. I still desire to be as dreamy and wistful as Anne. I thirst for her ambition and will of spirit. I long for her knack of adventure and humor. Yet these yearnings from those long sixteen years ago are now mixed with experience in reality. It's mixed with mangled dreams and a broken heart. It's mixed with a realization that perhaps the lovely romances from the series, backdropped against rollicking winds and exquisite nature, aren't available in the here and now. Not in the here and now of crude noises of the streets and grating grumblings of disgruntled passerbys.

So it's a strange feeling to desire something so innocent and pristine when the world doesn't seem so. It's a strange feeling to desire something so virtuous and idealistic when I don't seem so. It's as if I'm still the same as I was sixteen years ago... but then again, I'm not.