Young Dreams

When you were young, did you know what you wanted to be when you grew up? Did you have an innocence of youth, full of excitement and ambition? For as long as I can remember, my dream was to be a successful business woman. I don’t think I had a specific vocation in mind, but I wanted to be a top manager with an office at the top of a sky scraper, and for the relaxation side (I obviously understood the stress that goes hand in hand with ambition and success from a very young age) I wanted a beach bar in Jamaica! I know, I didn’t want too much did I?

As I grew older, that dream stayed with me, but a level of fear set in. I guess looking back it was a fear of failure. My family encouraged me to some extent; to go to University to better myself, but they were always quick to shoot my dreams down telling me to “live in the real world and stop dreaming.” Those words still ring loudly in my mind and have stuck with me since I was young. So was it a fear of failure that I had, or was it that my idealism was not realistic? How could I make my parents proud when they felt that way themselves?

This was the foundation that set off my idealistic realism. A world was created where I knew my potential, my ambition to get me there, but a constant voice telling me that I needed to be more realistic to save disappointment. I began to live in a parallel world of what I wanted my life to be, alongside a life of how my life should be. How can anyone succeed in a world like this? I was successful from a young age, which was taken away from me just as quickly, all from my own doings. Again this is individually interpreted – what does success mean to you? Mine was to live my idealistic dream. A life like a RomCom. I am still stuck, searching for this inner voice inside me, the innocent youth needing to break through the mature exterior! We have one life, so why can I not live it as I really want to? I feel physically sick at the thought of breaking free, yet I long for it so badly! What am I so scared of? I am completely lost in translation!