10. Fun, the year of the Unicorn       

Dear diary,

They often say that you can't truly understand someone until you walked a mile in their shoes. I never understood that human saying completely, but I do now. Before I met Van I have never truly tried to put myself in another person's place, to try to see how the world looked from their perspective, but now I think I understand.

Although the fairy society isn't perfect, as I already said, I was still mostly sheltered from the harsh realities of life. Only when I started seeing things from another perspective, the elves' perspective, I started to realize how small my world was in comparison to everything that was out there. I worried about my house, about my family and friends not understanding me as if it were the most important thing in the world.

Visiting other worlds helped me realize that many problems were happening out there that were so much bigger than my small, fairy life.

I always knew that there were problems, pain, and struggle in life, but only when I turned myself into an elf and spent some time among them did I realize how big those problems could be.

There were elf families that didn't have enough to eat or where to sleep, and they didn't complain. They never complained but were happy with what they had even though it was less than the others had. My fairy family would have complained and would have expected, well, demanded to receive help from friends and family. If by any chance they were unable to comply they would be described as cruel and uncaring. But the elves I saw were joyous even when they barely had enough. They celebrated every day of breathing the fresh air and simply being alive. There were no strict rules, but still, people respected each other and lived in peace. There were no punishments, only attempts to help people to become better even when someone did something bad.

I was amazed by what I saw, and there I was worried about the fairy marriage rule. They had a whole other range of much bigger problems. Meeting Van's family was a surprise and their reaction to me was fantastic. They didn't seem to share the same misconceptions as fairies about differences and problems in the kind of relationship Van and I had. They just wanted us to be happy.

That was incredible to me because although my friends and family did want me to be happy, they never understood that my definition of happiness wasn't the same as theirs. They wanted me to finish school because that would be good for my future, but actually, it was what they thought would be good for me. All I wanted was to be myself and to enjoy the beauty of life. 

They thought they had the best idea of what was good for me and that was it. My opinion didn't matter. I was too young and naive to know what I wanted, so they were there to take care of me. No matter how cruel it sounds, I kept wondering what would I do when they were gone. Would I even be able to survive by myself since everything was served to me on a silver plate? Eventually, I wouldn't even be able to distinguish what was the thing I wanted to do and what was imposed on me. That scared me because how was I to be me if I wasn't even sure what I wanted and what was just an effort not to disappoint my family.

For this reason, I loved Van's family. They let him be whoever he chose to be, and to date whomever he liked. He was showered with love and support no matter what he chose to do. I loved spending time with them since it was something I never had in the fairy society.

These changes from elf to fairy also gave me a different perspective on my fairy life. I realized that I should be more grateful for the things I have since not everyone is as lucky as I am. Being a fairy could be challenging, sure, but my trips to the elf world taught me to appreciate small things about my life. The abundance of food and shelter, the beauty of my home and my world.

Elf world was so shocking for me since it was quite different from my world. Some places were beautiful but there were also places, nearby, that were poor and sad looking. I felt like my world was expanding, and I realized that we fairies don't do as much as we can to help those creatures in need. The simple reason for this was that we didn't know.

As the years went by, we became so self-involved that we thought we were doing all that we could, by making the world more beautiful.

The truth is that although I adore beauty, it is not what gets food on the table or shelter from the rain. We should get more involved with the regular creatures that need help. Instead of spending so much time on making a perfect flower, no matter how beautiful and precious it is, we could help the creatures and plants that were already alive.

We could feed the hungry and give shelter to the poor instead of just closing ourselves off in our little worlds and trying to convince ourselves that we are doing the best we can. Are we really?

I remember once hearing about some elf problems, but I didn't have time to get involved, I was to busy making perfect flowers. In my head, one thought kept circling as an evil echo saying 'that's their problem let them take care of it'. And I did. I am so disappointed to say that I let it go.

I had my own life to live, but what I didn't know then and I do know now is that one second, one word would have made a difference in their lives.

After meeting Van I started spending more time in his world since we couldn't hang out in mine and I started realizing how different it was from hearing the stories. To see the sad eyes of those people who had nowhere to turn but were still nice and kind. Some of them much kinder than some of my fairy friends. I have to do something to get more involved in helping others, but I am not yet sure what.