Little red riding hood, or the story of happiness.

Oh, my happy place.

Once upon a time, not too long ago, there was a young girl, merely 15 years old. She lived on the countryside of a long-forgotten land with her mother, her father and her sister. She had a life, which no one could complain about. She had friends, she had a family and she even did good in school. Yet she felt like that was not enough. There had to be more.

 

The days went on and on, never seeming to change their faces. One morning she woke up, sat up in her bed and a thought dropped into her head. There must be more.
That day she sent out a letter to an address she’d never heard of, eager to know who lived there and who she would get an answer from. Some weeks later she finally held it in her hand, the answer to where the more she needed lay.

She packed the few things she had into a bag and threw it over her shoulder, briefly kissed her mother and father goodbye and hugged her sister, wishing her well for the future. She left the house. It was that moment when deep inside her she knew she would never come back as the person she was now.

On her journey to her happy place the girl met many strangers. Some of them were wolves, others turned out to be angels in disguise, keeping her safe from troubles she couldn’t even imagine going through. She experienced adventures and wonders, things she could never have dreamed of. As she had never expected, but only hoped for things to happen, she was never disappointed. The only emotions the little girl felt were surprise, awe and love, the love of the many people who had once been strangers, but were now her friends and family. She had never felt so complete in her life.

One day, the girl got a strange feeling. She looked back on everything she had done and said, and quickly found the reason. All the time she had been at her happy place, she had almost forgotten about her life at her old home. She realized that it would be better to go back to her old family and friends, and her adventures had to have an end. And so, heavy-heartedly she managed to say goodbye to all her new loved ones, not knowing when or if she would ever see them again.

Her mother and her father were already waiting outside the house when the little girl arrived. How have you been?, they wanted to know. Oh, how the time has passed, they noticed. But the little girl didn’t feel like answering their questions, not at this time. So she went to bed and slept for a long time.

When finally the girl woke up, nobody wanted to hear her wild stories about the adventures and wonders she had experienced. The only one she could tell her thoughts was herself and so she spent most of her time alone in her room, writing down the breathtaking tales of her past year. The little girl turned herself around from the people around her, pretending she was the same person she’d used to be before she went on her journey, except she wasn’t. Nobody cared enough to notice, but she was at the point where she didn’t only miss the former strangers who had now grown roots deeply into hear heart, but also the person she had been when she was with them. The happy, life loving person, the version of herself she liked the most, because it was the most natural one, the one that she had become on her own.

Slowly, slowly she realized that it would never again be as perfect as it had been and she would never get to become the person she was in her happy place again. This discovery took away the ground below her feet, flooding her consciousness with thoughts, drowning her with tears. It would never be the same. The girl never fully recovered from this shock she’d received simply by the truth, but she managed to deal with it so that no one would notice. But still she sits in her room at night and writes down her stories and thoughts, waiting for someone to read them.