In Defense of our Dreams

Dear 30 Seconds to Mars,

I think I should introduce myself first. Hi, my name is Jen.

I'm a 20 year old college student, my program being Tourism and Travel - Flight Service; I hope to be a flight attendant one day. I'm absolutely enamoured by life, and I savour every moment, cherish every breath, and live every second to the fullest. I live without regret, and I wake up every day with a smile, Kings and Queens blasting as my 6AM alarm clock. I look outside to see that I beat the sunrise again, and all I can say to the world is 'Carpe Diem, bitches' with a grin. There isn't any other place I want to be except here or any other life I want to live except mine.

And I have you three to thank.

So, thank you.

I would never expect to be like this 5 months ago. I didn't necessarily hate myself or was suicidal, but I was scared to live, scared to breathe, scared to even think of going somewhere in life. I didn't feel allowed to express myself, to be myself or to even accept myself. To put things simply, I had a life, but I wasn't inspired to live, and just ‘living’ didn’t feel like an accomplishment anymore. Existing wasn’t enough.

Ten or so months ago, I got it in my head to just do something with my life; So I applied to college, but mostly out of fear that 'living pointlessly' would give my mother a reason to hate me more. I made my decision on logical choices, such as what would bring me away from my mother fast enough and effectively enough. So I told her I wanted to be a flight attendant. When she heard that, she just scoffed; She asked me questions about it sarcastically, and would refer to the program as another embarrassment (it’s a college program and not a university program; there’s a difference in Canada), despite her friends being thoroughly impressed with me. I just think it wasn’t what she wanted of me.

I got a lot of encouragement from the rest of my family but really, behind closed doors, it was like walking into a minefield with a blindfold on; I was pretty scared. Was it the right thing to do? Would I disappoint myself this time, instead of disappointing my just mother? I had only begun to actually to accept myself as a person and not just a thing, a tool, to live out someone else’s dream. With my own teenage dreams of being a screenwriter, ones I had put all my love and energy into, thoroughly crushed, I didn’t know if I could put the same fragile confidence and hope into this new, relatively unknown dream I had.

During the winter holidays, as the date of first day of class drew near, my smiles got brighter and my nervous shaking could more easily be mistaken as jitters of excitement. I was afraid to fail again but in retrospect, I was more afraid of what would happen, anything that would happen. But one night, I was browsing through a friend's tumblr page and found her spazzing about This is War and the 'Kings & Queens' video; She had a youtube link up, I believe. Curious me, I clicked it and watched.

It was the most well-spent 5 minutes and 48 seconds of my life.

There's a line in the song, 'In Defense of our Dreams', that really spoke to me. For a time, dreams were all I had, and even those were taken away from me. Dreams are precious, and I learned the hard way that they are something to be protected, cherished, and pursued. Everything I already learned and knew, you confirmed and told me "Yes, that's true. We stand with you, and behind you."

Every day that I wake up and watch the sunrise from the window of a plane, I'll have no one else to thank, but you. You can see the sunrise, but unless you love life like how you've taught me, I would never have felt the sunrise.

Forever grateful,
Jen.

Toronto, Canada

Decadent.pastry@gmail.com // @decadent_pastry