I remember the moment I realized that I no longer knew how to pretend. I was around six or seven, I suppose. Not quite in the double digits. Of that I am sure. My friends and I were playing Peter Pan. I was supposed to be Wendy. This was one of my very favorite games. Brave and dashing Peter. Evil, but alluring Captain Hook (yes, even then there was a certain mystique to the bad boys, but we shall discuss that later). Lost Boys who need a mother, and Wendy who is more than happy to take up the role. Peter, the boy she loves who she is doomed to never really have. In hindsight, this all set the tone for my existence (again, a discussion for another day).

Not one week earlier this game made complete sense. I loved to lose myself in this world. It was like second nature. I could step in and out of that fantasy land seamlessly. The magic was real. Tangible. It felt so very right.

This day, however, everything changed. This is the moment I began to grow up. I felt it when it happened. The same thing that made perfect sense one week ago now felt completely and utterly absurd. Embarrassing almost. I can remember that even in my child’s mind I was heartbroken over this. Even then I understood, on some level, that this was the end of an era. The last fleeting moments of pretend, of magic and I didn’t know how to undo it. To this very day, I remember exactly how it felt. Like being in a wonderful dream and being doused with a bucket of cold water. It hurt.

I have since spent an inordinate amount of time, unsuccessfully, attempting to recapture those magical moments. Trying to get back to that magical place. The place where dreams come true, there is a prince for every princess, and you could step off of a windowsill and fly simply on the power of a happy thought. Most of these attempts end in the abrupt and painful crash back to reality where people let you down, heartbreak can be crippling, and there is no White Knight.

It has been my experience that the closest anyone ever gets to reaching that place again, is when they are lucky enough to fall in love. It’s like, for that moment, the door that stands between dark, grey reality and glittering, shining magic is unlocked and stands ajar, allowing a brief glimpse into that promising place. For a moment we feel invincible, as though nothing could possibly pull you down. We feel we can once again fly on the power of this wonderfully happy thought. Anything and everything is possible, if we could just get to that door and squeeze through to the other side.

We reach for the knob. Strain.

I think a handful of us are just privileged enough to stumble forward and make it. We have all heard of those few epic loves. Perhaps it was your great-grand parents or an aunt and uncle whom you adored. They struggled and fought and made it to the door.

I think the rest of us tend to fall just short of making it there. The love fractures somehow and we trip and the door slams shut in our faces. Or perhaps it was never love to begin with, just reaching for the wrong door. It looked so very much like the one you remembered from when you were little.

Not many of us make it to the door.  After trying so hard one too many times, we grow weary of it slamming shut. The crash, as it latches, is an assault on our senses. Some of us stop trying to reach it all together. It hurts too much.

I hope someday I reach that door. I hope that I find that prince that will help me find it again and together we will both make it back to that wonderful place. It gets harder and harder to remember what it looks like though. Harder to remember the feel of the wind in my hair as I fly over the Never Land. Harder to convince myself I ever saw the door at all.