She peeled back her lemon curtains and let in the light of the beautiful spring morning. She looked out her bedroom window, gasping in awe of the landscape around about her. The sun was just rising in the azure blue sky. She felt its beam hit her face, warming it. She smiled and exhaled, looking downwards. She caught sight of the powerful, sparkling ocean. It was her best friend. She had felt the connection with it ever since her youth. Looking at its rippling waves just calmed her down, making her feel herself, feel real. This is why she had to give it all up, go back to were she belonged, to just being a average person, with an average life.

For a while she had been more than that, a household name. Famous, but that had been why she had to get away. For becoming famous meant she’d lost the thing she had become famous for.

She had always wanted everyone to know who she was, be known for her one and only gift, writing. She spent years attempting to write that best seller. It took years of hardship, doing anything to make ends meet, sacrificing time and her social life, to write.

Then finally it all paid off. She wrote the best seller, and her other books were quickly republished. Money came flooding in, as she sold more and more books. She suddenly didn’t have to worry about work and her financial security. She had time to do everything she couldn’t do before. She was invited to all the best parties and went to them all. She began to make friends with celebrities, dropping her old boring ones. She was always on the front page of newspapers and magazines. She became really well known, people would look at her in the street, her life was everything anyone could dream of. She had anything you could think of.

She was ecstatic for a while but it all stopped making her happy. She became sick of the fake friends who were just looking for money and fame, sick of the constant stress of loosing weight, to look perfect. After the parties she felt strangely low and upset. There was an on going pressure to become better at everything. Although she hated all of that, her real enemy was the press. They made every little thing five times the size, twisting her words, and spreading them over ever newspaper and magazine. They watched her every move, like a lion ready to strike. She felt hurt and embarrassed when she saw her picture in the newspapers and the title above it saying, “Is this the woman you want influencing your children?”

No one understood her; she hadn’t done anything terribly wrong. She was just an average person, trying to make her way in the world. Trying to be the best she could be and enjoy herself. Everyone makes mistakes, but she seemed to be the only person who had them plastered everywhere, for everyone to see and to judge her from them. Her friends left her and the only thing she believed she could rely on crumbled into nothing. Her gift had gone; she found no pleasure from it any more. She tried, but no one liked it, she didn’t like herself.

One morning she woke up and it all got too much for her. Thoughts circled around her head. What’s the point? Why am I here? How has everything turned out so wrong when this was all I wanted it to be? How and why?

She ran out of her house, needing to get away from it all. She jumped into her car and drove, and drove and drove. Driving for miles, these thoughts becoming bigger and bigger. She pulled down the roof of her car, letting the wind blow in her face. Her burdens seemed too much to bear. Her life was a mess and she had no idea how to begin to fix it. Suddenly it all got too much. She had to end it, had to get out. Her head spun. She felt sick, and with one swift pull she swerved the car off the road.

The car crashed violently into a tree, the windscreen smashed into bits. Her body flew into the air, and with no seatbelt on to stop her, she soared through the air and landed violently on her back.

She lay there panting, trying to get her breath. She wasn’t badly injured, just a few cuts and bruises. Where did I land? She wondered, as the ground beneath her was not hard like a road and she wasn’t sinking into it, like a field or a garden. She felt something wet lap onto her foot and she cautiously sat up.

The sight took her breath away. A wave of emotion came over her as she looked at it. Her best friend, the ocean in all its majesty. It was the exact beach she had been brought to as a child, and had spent days and days writing in her early years.

She suddenly realised why she was feeling like this, why she wasn’t happy. It was because she’d lost her roots, the ones that made her who she was. She’d lost the most important things in life. Fame and money didn’t make her happy, they never would. She wasn’t like that, the more simple things in life made her happy. She was happy when she was poor and writing. When her friends were real, liking her for who she was.

She turned around and caught sight of her grandfather’s old house. He had passed away many years before. He always encouraged her in her writing, telling her she’d make it one day, but also warning her it may not be what she expected. He had been right, her life wasn’t how she wanted it to be, having fame was definitely not been what she had expected it to be.

She stood up and wandered over to the house. She had almost forgotten about it. When her grandfather had just died she couldn’t bear to go to it, there were too many memories, but now she felt drawn to it.

She climbed up the old painted steps and pushed the door. It opened with a creak. She looked inside, it was strangely tidy, everything the way it had been when she was just a child and her grandfather had looked after her. It astounded her that there was only one sofa and a small portable television on an old wooden table in the living room, only an old stove and a table in the kitchen. Upstairs there was just one bedroom with a bed and an old writing table in it. Her grandfather’s pen was still sitting on his table. Beside it was his diary; she ran her finger down its soft leather cover, should she read it? She felt that she had to, and so turned to the last page and began to read. He had been writing in it when he died suddenly of a heart attack. His last entry was full of mixed emotions. It told of his love of simple things and his worry that the current world did not. All it wanted was to get bigger and better. Richer and smarter, more attractive. Her eyes filled up with tears as she read of his fears and his prayers for her. By the time she finished reading she had decided what she needed to do.

She sold her house, gave away her money and became a normal person again. She apologised to her old friends, and moved to her grandfather’s house in the country. There she felt herself. She moved some of her own furniture in, but she kept one thing. Her grandfather’s writing desk. Although she was happy again, she couldn’t write, she couldn’t explain it, just nothing was there. Why? She wondered, before it was because her mind was filled with other things, but now it wasn’t; yet she still couldn’t write. Was it the universe and fate punishing her?

She shook her head from those thoughts and wondered over to her grandfather’s desk. She ran her finger along its old mahogany surface. “An idea, an idea, what to write?” She muttered to herself.


Suddenly a though came to her. “Perfect,” she thought, “why didn’t I think of that before?” Some good had to come of her experiences. She lifted her fountain pen and began to write. “The flying horse that fell, my autobiography, By Melissa Kyle.”