In this coming-of-age fairy tale, I tried to illustrate the best way I could how a girl transitions to a woman instantly and sometimes even if she doesn’t want to; how there is so much we are kept in the dark about, then forced to know all at once.
The little girl sat in the middle of a wide room playing dolls with the darkness. She has never seen the light and craved seeing it. She could not tell the expressions of people in the dark. She could not see what someone was doing a few feet away in the dark. She was oblivious to it all in the dark.
She knew she had a huge window overlooking the world, but she was content with playing with her dolls.
From one day to the other the darkness did not want her to play anymore.
It held the girl’s arm tightly and her yells were too soft to be heard. It dragged her to the window and dragged the curtains open.
Light spilled in and for a split second she was blinded and then she could see.
She saw her own reflection. She saw the facial expressions on everyone passing by and she saw what everyone was doing.
The girl never thought about how her eyes were too small for her face or how her lips were too thin or how no matter how far she pulled her head forward there was still a flap of fat underneath her face. She was scared because she didn’t want to be the girl in the reflection, but just moments ago she was fine with who she was.
The girl never saw how behind everyone’s eyes was desperation and sadness because no one can ever get everything they wanted. Some even less than others. But they continue to move through life even with the scraps of dreams they once mapped out.
She pulled away, scared with what she saw, and tried to escape the light. The curtains wouldn’t close and even if she shielded herself from the light, she saw it all behind her eyes, playing like a broken record.
She glanced around her room. She looked at her doll discarded in the middle of the room and walked toward it. Her mind thought it knew what to do, but her body shivered in anticipation. The doll was gently placed in the back of her closet, with the doors closed and the darkness, alone.
The girl remained alone in the middle of her room, nowhere to hide in the light. She walked out the room, leaving her doll behind; and the darkness that concealed the world from her and her from the world was left behind, too.