My dream ended when I was born. Although I never knew it then, I just held on to something that would never come to pass. Dreams really do exist. But in the morning when you wake up, they are remembered just as a dream. That is what happened to me.

I always had the dream to dance like a beautiful ballerina twirling around and around and hearing people applaud¹ for me. When I was young, I would twirl around and around in the fields of wildflowers that grew in my backyard.

I thought that if I twirled faster everything would disappear and I would wake up in a new place. Reality woke me up when I heard a voice saying, "I don't know why you bother trying to dance. Ballerinas are pretty, slender² little girls. Besides, you don't have the talent to even be a ballerina." I remember how those words paralyzed³ every feeling in my body. I fell to the ground and wept for hours.

We lived in the country by a nearby lake. I did not like to be at home. When my parents were home, my mother just yelled⁴ and criticized⁵ because nothing was ever perfect in her life. She dreamed of a different life but she ended up living in the country far away from the city where she believed her dreams would have come true.

I enjoyed hanging out by the water. I would sit there for hours and stare at my reflection⁶. There I was, looking nothing like a pretty ballerina dancer. Reflections⁷ don't lie. Once the waves would come, my reflection was gone. Washed away just like my dream to dance.

As I grew older, I began to realize that the reason my dream was even born, was because it was something that was inside of me. The dream I had was never nurtured⁸ and cared for, so it slowly died. It's not that I wanted it to die, but I allowed it to die the day I started listening to the words, "You can't do it." When I finally woke up from many years of dreaming, I realized that you can't settle for dancing in the wildflowers, you have to move on to the platform.