Inspiration: “Mary Jane” by Caitlyn Scarlett

“This life that I’ve created will be the death of me.”

The camera flashes feel like warning signs, and my stomach flips at the blinding white lights. They flicker so that I never see the face of the person behind the camera. They are nothing but a silhouette.

I was four years old, and I liked to play make believe with my sister. We were witches and wizards, fairies and goblins, dragons and knights, all without leaving our backyard. We’d found our own world, a world where reality was a problem for another day. It was our own wardrobe, our own Narnia.

I seek distraction like a drug. I’m dancing, dancing under lights. I get lost in a haze of colors and for a moment wish that I could get lost enough that no one would recognize me.

I was eight years old, and I made my first best friend in drama class. We always laughed so much; we could never finish our plays.

Hollow laughter rings in my ears but it isn’t loud enough to drown out the silence in my head. The silence that tells me I’m doing something wrong, that getting here was supposed to make me happy.

I was 12 years old, and we had our school play. I went onstage for the first time, and I was reborn: A butterfly emerging from a cocoon. Every part of me fizzled with an energy that I’d never come across before. I knew that moments like these eventually became nothing but faded diary entries, but for once I wanted them to be something more, for this was a feeling I never wanted to lose.

I’m endlessly searching for that feeling now, but I can’t find it anywhere. My days blur together to form an endless gray, devoid of the love that got me here.

I was 16 years old, and it was my first successful audition. I began to entertain the ideas that danced through my sleep. Ideas I’d been chasing since I first stepped out on that stage. I watched in disbelief, as my dreams became my reality.

I am 20 years old, and my dreams have been tarnished by the truth. The spotlight is so bright I feel I will burn.

I am 20 years old, and I am minding my four-year-old cousin. She races towards me, a toy dragon clutched in her hands.

We spend the afternoon being witches and wizards, fairies and goblins, dragons and knights, all without leaving her backyard.

She found the magic I managed to lose.

—By Sarah B., 17, Melbourne