Timelapse (a Rapunzel reworking)

Day 6274 + 0

You pace the length of the room, over and over and over. The same ten feet you’ve crossed a million times. Your shaggy lavender rug, with yellow flowers woven in, is tattered and torn from a century of weight.

Up, down, up, down. Feet hitting the floor.

There’s nowhere else to go.

Over and over and over.

Day 6274 + 29

Your room is your haven. One big box of space, with a bed pushed into a corner, a desk in another. The walls are painted baby blue, like an ocean dialed down.

It’s supposed to make you feel calm.

Day 6274 + 56

The books you’ve read have glorified ADHD. Sometimes it's a tool. Other times it’s just a pain. It’s always a small character trait, though. Like the author casually sprinkled in the crane that wrecks a life.

One, two, three. Crushed flowers.

You can never stop moving. Stop thinking. Stop tapping. Your mind is never the calm ocean, just a collage of videos. It’s overpowering.

And annoying.

And when you’re stuck in a single room for years, your sanity’s downfall.

Day 6274 + 64

Sometimes you can only express yourself through abstract nonsense, in a way visual arts just can’t measure up to.

So you turn to poetry.

You love haiku especially, how the 17-or-under syllables can carry oceans of meaning. The best part is they don’t even have to make sense.

They’re like little snapshots of time.

Day 6274 + 65

piece by piece, broken

rainbows crumbling to the ground

the songbird’s last cry

Day 6274 + 83

There’s nothing to do in this room. 

You don’t want to touch your blue walls with your paintbrush, so instead you watercolor in your sketchbook. Always concentric circles. Rings inside of rings inside of rings, dipping the paintbrush in and out of the water. The colors melt into each other, a beautiful embrace.

It’s like you harnessed a rainbow. A ribbon of vibrancy, tied to the page. But the sun can’t stay out without a cloud passing by, and you never finish a book without being sad it’s over, and your colors come at a cost. The water gets murky. Dried up sunshine. So you empty it out the window and refill.

It’s a long way down from your window. Up in a crooked tower, the view would be stunning if not for the endless trees. Sunshine blooms in the aquamarine skies, but the grass below you can’t flourish while being dumped with gray water daily.

They shrivel.

You shrug.

Nothing comes without a cost, and you’ve paid too much already.

Day 6274 + 90

The highlight of your life is your mother. While you’re in your room, she’s collecting tales to tell you when she returns.

Your mother is your rose, your rainbow, your dancing sun. She tells you everyone you need to know about the world, while keeping you safe in your tower.

Mother knows best.

Day 6274 + 121

beauty abandoned

soft petals against cement

a discarded rose

She brought you a rose today.

It’s so pretty, vivid petals hugging each other.

She said she found it tossed on the side of the road.

Day 6274 + 138

Your hair is like your anchor. It’s always there, five pounds of gold locks twisted into a braid. It has the same comfort as a weighted blanket.

Other times, you wish you could throw your hair away. Thrust a fist through the window, slash a piece of glass around your scalp. Toss your prize out the window for the squirrels to nestle in.

But you never touch your hair, for it’s the pride of your your mother.

Twice a month, she’ll help you with your golden monstrosity. You’ll sit by the window as the sky grows dark, pale clouds dotting the iris dusk. She’ll take out your braid and brush it until it’s smooth. You sing while you watch the birds swoop, sweet lyrics embedded in your head.

You barely register the words any more, having sung it so many times.

Day 6274 + 159

The walls are closing in.

You feel trapped, you feel lost, you feel forgotten.

There’s nowhere to go.

Nowhere to run.

Nowhere other than this flowered carpet, the blue walls, the piles of sketchbooks and novels. 

You’re practically wasting away.

Day 6274 + 167

You want so much. 

You want to feel the green grass tickling your feet. 

You want to run a finger down the cold cobblestone of the tower’s exterior.

You want to laugh and run, fighting against the warm wind as the sun waves goodbye.

You want to see, you want to hear, you want to smile so much your face hurts.

When you tell this to your mother, she just shushes you. “Don’t be greedy,” she tuts. 

She’s right.

You have everything you need.

Food, a bed, activities for creating. A loving mother.

You don’t need the world when you have this room and it’s contents.

You don’t deserve the world.

Day 6274 + 200

But what if you want the world?

Day 6274 + 201

You’re tired of wishing on the stars.

Every night, you walk to the windowsill, dressed in a white nightgown, your hair coiled around your neck like a scarf. You pull open the windows and lean against the windowsill, closing your eyes. Letting the cool night air brush against your face.

Deep breath.

Deep breath.

It’s the only thing you like about this tower—how it feels at night. The ink-covered world is laid out beneath you, the stars glimmering in the coal sky.

Day 6274 + 202

Some people blow kisses.

You blow wishes.

Whispering all of your crinkled dreams, hoping they’ll spiral on the wind.

You don’t believe in magic.

But maybe, just maybe, the stars will hear.

Day 6274 + 232

ink-drenched canvas 

dotted with twinkling amber 

wish upon a star

Day 6274 + 249

You feel suffocated.

Day 6274 + 250

You feel forgotten.

Day 6274 + 251

You feel trapped.

Day 6274 + 252

Like a bird with tied wings, you want to leave, to fly, to dream, but instead you’re helplessly rooted to the ground.

Day 6274 + 260

You’re sick.

Of this room.

Of these books.

Of the filled sketchbooks.

Of watching time tick by, but nothing new changes.

You realize that if you timelapsed your nearly-17-years-of-life, it would look like it was looped.

Same routine.

Same activities.

Day after day after day.

Day 6274 + 323

The days blur.

And they blend.

And weeks pass - 

Gone.

Day 6274 + 330

You don’t like long poetry as much (but you know there’s value in it too), but today you wrote something called “lost”.

Day 6274 + 331

You wanted to show your mother, but you held back.

Day 6274 + 332

What if she doesn’t like it? 

It’s kind of weird.

Day 6274 + 335

lost in a haze

        black and white

blurred in a d a z e

        blinding light

world crumbling to

f i n e onyx dust,

lost in another world 

        of lilac thoughts

              and opalescent dreams 

other-worldly 

      memo r i e s

tossing and turning

piecing together 

broken r 

            e

          a l i

              t

            y

lost in a world of cotton

        counting sheep

              collecting lost marbles 

confused 

afraid 

              mystical shades

swirling and

        spinning and

              twirling and

                      vanishing and

                          whirling and

        g o n e

wondering 

waiting

eyes flutter shut

other realms broadcasted 

behind your e y e l i d s

the cracked boundaries 

        of what was real

smudged on the 

        edges of  

              slumber

Day 6274 + 349

You’ve decided to leave.

No more hair ropes.

No more pretty pink smiles.

You want to claim back your life.

Day 6274 + 360

But it’s hard to find the strength you need to do some things.

After all, this room is your haven.

Do you really, truly want to go?

What about your mother?

She’d never let you leave.

But she can’t control you.

But.

You’ve used that word countless times without doing it justice.

“But” is a word that says it isn’t the end of the story.

“But” is voicing your opinions.

Voicing isn’t enough.

The next step is action.

You can’t use “but” if you’re not going to do something about a problem.

And you’ve decided that this feeling of hopelessness hanging over your head qualifies.

Day 6274 + 365

Another year has passed already for the tied down bird.

Yet you think should completely discard that analogy because luckily, you’re not a bird, and you have opposable thumbs that work just fine when it comes to escapes.

It’s your birthday, actually.

17.

Which means you’re 17 years overdue for...a lot.

Day 6274 + 365

Once upon a time

You wished on dandelions 

Laughing in the strawberry sunlight 

As you danced on faerie tiptoes 

You twirled 

Vision blurred 

Memories swirled 

Until your worried melted away

Now, you’re trying to get up

But you’re lying in the dust

You want to take a stand 

Yet no one lends a hand 

You’re falling 

And drowning 

And hoping 

And dreaming 

And broken, so, so broken 

There’s no happily ever after for every story

~ Serenity Azzlyn

Day 6274 + 365

You’ve been repeating that quote to myself since the beginning of your memories. It’s a clip of a larger spoken word poem, and for years, you agreed with the poetess. Her words became your anthem in the tower, the reasoning you turned to every time you got too ahead of myself. You melted into the acceptance that your didn’t need to leave, your were perfectly fine here, and that happily ever after was just a mirage on the horizon.

But now, as you get ready to leave, you think that that reasoning should pack its bags too.

Because if you keep chasing after that happy ending, then maybe, just maybe, you’ll reach it.