It is okay to love & to dream

I know it's not possible but I want to start over. I want to go back to the time when I wanted my dark hair into twin pigtails because I wanted to look like my older sister, Claire. I remember asking my mother when I was going to be like her; she had the perfect blonde hair, the perfect voice that won her a huge sum from the VSA international young soloists competition. Then she moved to college and was making perfect grades.

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I used to look forward to when I too would do something to make my mother smile the way she smiled at Claire. I heard the way she spoke about her to everyone,

“Claire's prize money helped me send her to college. I am so proud of her”

I wondered if she would ever say such a thing about me. So I buckled up and began to put my slender body to use.

I had been told right from when I was little that I had a model's body. Severally at middle school, I would walk into the classroom or into any place at all and heads would turn. I used to hate my legs because they were not long, straight legs like Claire's but over time, I realized they were my greatest asset.

I got my mom to get me the most comfortable heels I could walk in then began taking modeling classes on YouTube.

I never told anyone what I was doing, because I knew my sister would just try to give me the ‘perfect big sister's advice’ which she always wanted to give unsolicitedly.

Every time I asked my mom what she thought I could do to make a big name like Claire, she would simply smile at me, brush my wild hair away from my face, and say the same thing she had been saying for the past 15 years,

“You should speak with Claire, she has more experience than you do”

I don't know why but I was always infuriated by that statement. Maybe this was why I always saw Claire as competition and tried to outdo all the things she did to impress my mom so she could be impressed by me too.

Every time I had an opportunity to go through the runway, I invited her. At first, she was excited that I was doing something for myself, but soon she began to make comments like,

“I don't like what you wear when you're on stage. It makes you look indecent”

I went back to Claire's old pictures because of that statement to see what she wore for the competition. It was a ripped jean with a tank top that barely covered her navel. So that was decent to mom?

It was that incident that made me begin to dream. I wanted to be the biggest model the world had seen, to be better than Claire, to do something that would gain my mother's attention.

So I stopped attending my classes in order to put more effort into practicing, and I went on a diet. The perfect body and the perfect walk meant the perfect model.

Mom didn't understand what I was going through so all she did was confront me about secluding myself from my family. She kept reporting me to Claire and my sister in turn kept calling me until I blocked all her lines, until the 14 of February.

I was scrolling through social media to find a modeling concept that I could use for my birthday photoshoot which was in 3 days, when I suddenly heard a commotion downstairs. I left my room to check what was going, I saw Claire in my mother's arms. She was weeping profusely.

Curiosity made me climb down the stairs and when I did, my mother released Claire and grabbed me into her arms.

“What’s going on?” I asked, overwhelmed. My mom had not hugged me, she hadn't even touched me in months.

“I didn't make my papers, Cecil”

I didn't understand what she was talking about. She had the most perfect grades in her first year and I said so to her.

“I know, I gradually began to drop because I was trying hard to make a career out of my music. I wanted mom to be proud of me”

“Mom has always been proud of you…”

“No. She didn't want me to do music,” I turned to my mother who nodded with tears in her eyes. It was then I realized what had been going on. Claire had been struggling too, in fact in her eyes, I was the perfect one.

I had been the fool for dropping school to chase a dream that was going nowhere. 3 times, I had been rejected from going on the runway because I lacked focus. My dream was born from envy, it wasn't going to make me better, it was going to destroy me.

There and then on lovers day, my mother, sister and I talked about everything we felt and everything we thought.

When I heard Claire say that she once asked if she was a fool for having such big dreams, I told them that I had just asked myself the same question, “Am I a fool for dreaming?”

“I want you girls to chase your dreams now. I realize I have been the stumbling block all this while, and I will give you as much support as possible” my mom said, we locked our hands around the table and let our tears flow, knowing that it was okay to love, and to dream.