Lexi--Dennis and Daisy

                                                       Dennis and Daisy

Stuck

Dennis: “Do you every look up at the sky and think your belly button smells like cheese
wiz?”

Hi, my name is Daisy Debuke. Dennis Delaro is my boyfriend. He has a charming smile,
hair that fuzzes up like a Q-tip when it dries, and always knows how to make me smile.
This ability to make me smile, however, comes with random comments like this one.

Me: “Why must your charm be so endearing? And yet you cannot treat any moment with
a fraction of seriousness.”

My country requires all children, ages 17-18, to be thrown into an arena with blood
thirsty wolves, treacherous landscape, and billions of people trying to kill you. The only
way to get out of the arena, is to die. There is no drawing to decide who steps into the
arena, no volunteers to step in for you. I have reached the age where it is my turn to
step into the arena.
Okay, so maybe it’s not a death arena, but it is terrifying and sudden and every child’s
nightmare. The name even more horrific, the real world.
They cushion the blow of “real life” with this fuzzy imaginary one that you live in until it’s
your turn to step onto the playing field. Teachers, parents, relatives (all adults really)
always say, “Oh, just you wait until real life hits you. You’ll be in for a real surprise!” And
yet, though they have control of our so called pre-life, they continue to let us sit in the
blurry, intermission of a life we are living in.
I have expressed these accounts to Dennis on several occasions, sulking in my
disproval of the system. He, however, does not look at the remainder of our eternity as a
series of death traps. His light hearted whimsy lets every problem roll right off like a
bead of water sliding down a green leaf in the early morning. The water seeps down into
the soil to effect everyone else, but it does not stick to him.
I wish I had the naive perspective to approach the world in this manner, but to my
despair, I do not. My first mission in this arena of death is referred to by a great majority
of the population as “college”. College comes with all sorts of complicated add on
features like locations, new people, new problems, and let’s not forget the ever
wonderful debt liable to haunt you well into your rocking chair stage.
I feel so stuck in this perpetual, fuzzy, imaginary, high school world that I cannot even
begin to fathom this “college” topic. I need to get away from this fuzz, surpass the smog
layer and somehow find air that is clean enough to breath, find air that will help me
realize where I’m supposed to be.
I am leaving tomorrow. Packing up my four wheel, carry on sized bag, and going away. I
am going to find the place I’m supposed to be, even if it means finding a thousand
places I’m not.

Departure Day

I open my email from the subway after arriving in New York from flight 172 departed
from LAX. I click the little pen and paper symbol in the top right corner of my screen and
begin to write.

Dear Mom, Dad, and Dennis,
I am sorry I left without saying goodbye. There was nothing any of you did wrong, no
school bullies, no sexual offenders I’m running away from. Most importantly, there is no
need to worry.
I was not even sure why I left until I took off. Then it hit me.
The lights began to wiz by, faster, faster, faster, until the air caught under the wings
thrusting you upward, like a parent pushing a child on a swing. Now you are the child in
the swing, cheering with glee as the thrust propels you off the ground and into a world
apart from your own. The plane takes off, turning the once ordinarily perceived ground
into an infinitely starry sky. All the reality of below shrinking to specks. All the problems
of below fade into a blur of passing towns, only represented by their grid like lights.
Every passing cluster takes you farther away from the place you left behind and towards
the one your supposed to be. This is the new beginning you have been seeking. Here it
is, sitting on metal wings and an engine, with less than satisfactory snacks. Your ears
may pop and you may hit turbulence, but nonetheless it's here, and it's now.
I will see you all soon.
Love,
Daisy Debuke
Send.