Everything in Transit

Sometimes I think my life is like The Little Mermaid.

I'm the girl who has everything. I go to a great college, where I study great subjects under great teachers. I have a great family that loves me and is not broken by divorce or sickness. I have a great boyfriend who would do anything for me. I have great friends and roommates capable of fun times and deep caring. Yet some days, and today is one of them, I just feel utterly, hopelessly miserable. I think the fact that I compare my life to a children's movie is somewhat indicative of the problem.

Everything makes sense when you’re little. All that matters is the world inside your head. Save Fantasyland from the bad guys! You’ve got all afternoon to do it, and for someone whose existence has only spanned eight years, that’s a lifetime. You can’t understand what faith is because you can’t imagine anything else. When your mind is so huge and pure and the world knows no bounds, that’s when your imagination can wrap itself around God. You can shrink him down when your mind is like that. You don’t need answers to all these silly questions before you can love him or love other people; you just do because you should, and that’s all you know or need to know.

So maybe my life is more like Peter Pan: I don't want to grow up!

When I'm under pressure, I regress. I try to re-become the child I once was. I can talk myself into seeing the world as if it's the first time I ever looked at the sky or the sea or a little yellow snail that anyone else would pass by or step on. People know and expect that simple things amaze me and bring me joy, but they don't know that I had to practice seeing it that way. My mind is not the place it was when I was small. I can only regress so far.

Not much makes sense anymore. I don't know who I am (even though I spent four years of high school telling everyone I did). I can't understand what faith is because I never needed to know. I can't even wrap my mind around a little piece of God because I know now that shrinking him down the way I did once is a lie, and I wouldn't want to lie about something like that.

I want the happy Disney ending. Sometimes I just forget that heroes and heroines have to fight the bad guys to get there, and in the process, they change. Belle fell in love with the Beast. Pinocchio became a real boy. I don't want to change, but my position in the world is changing and I have no choice but to change with it. I want to love the things I've always loved and do the things I've always done with the people I've always held dear, and I want them to be exactly the way I've always held them dear.

Maybe that's what heaven is like.

Does anyone else feel this way? Or, a more fun question to amuse me on this over-thought and emotional afternoon: Which Disney movie describes your life? What character do you relate to? If you could be any Disney character, who would you choose? Entertain me!