Witchling Academy Semester Eight - Avery Song Page 0,3

wanted to put together all the pieces of my expectations into a simple path - one that I could follow and walk upon without anyone messing it up.

I had forgotten that life didn't run that way at all. I was literally setting myself up for failure. I was envisioning a world where everything would be achievable. A place where obstacles didn't exist, and I could achieve success at the tip of my fingertips within any aspect of my life.

The problem with that mindset was that it only would lead me down a path of disappointment. It would lead me down a road that was filled with expectations that were disrupted by reality. My feelings, hopes, and dreams would be shattered before I could get a damn shot at them.

This was the problem I'd dealt with these last few months, and in return, it landed me here. It resulted in me wasting all this time second-guessing my worth and losing opportunities to be around those I loved. All the opportunities I could have spent with friends, classmates, family, and my dear loved ones. I pushed them all aside by training consistently like my life depended on it. My world revolved around the idea of being the perfect individual in all departments.

Being the perfect son, boyfriend, kendo fighter, and Witchling student.

At the end of the day, I strived to achieve all of those and ended up lacking in every single area. It literally took me seeing Brianne lost in the grasp of the dark void and the dead bodies of the individuals I'd blindly killed in hopes of saving my lover for it to finally all click in.

I knew the problem the entire time, and yet I wished to put the blame on anything else.

The reason I failed was that I'd set myself up for failure. I was the orchestrator, the conductor, and the determining factor to my own demolition, and unless I accepted that, I'd never be able to obtain what I truly wanted.

"Have you figured it out?"

"Ya," I whispered and actually let my tears continue to run down my cheeks as I closed my eyes. "All of the time wasted on being perfect. On obtaining all these hopeful dreams and wishing to make memories after everything was said and done. I drove myself into a wall, again and again...all throughout this semester. I couldn't let my mind wander to something other than my dreams to succeed, and in the end, time went by and I lost everything around me. I never allowed myself to make mistakes. Never gave myself breaks to live in the moment. I stopped taking moments to just be around those who loved me, and I lost out on accepting help when it was offered right to my face."

I took a deep breath and allowed it to flow out of my nostrils.

"The darkness is scary. I'm frightened by it...and for the longest time, I couldn't dare admit that to myself. I'm afraid of the darkness not because of its qualities, but because I've never been able to accept that I'm worthy of being able to balance the light and the dark," I finally confessed. "There are good and bad times in this world for a reason. It's not just to make us struggle and feel the agony that's brought with pain and loss. We fall because we need to get up and rise. We struggle on the path of our dreams because, without such challenges, we'll never admire just how much we want something. If success was as easy as picking an apple from a tree, we'd all be able to do it and life would be...boring. We wouldn't appreciate how hard it was to reach that tallest point of the branch to grab the apple. Or the previous multiple efforts taken to grasp what our eyes envisioned would be in the palm of our hand. We'd never think about the steps it took to reach the tree or even the very first sight of that apple from afar that made us wish to taste its delicious sweetness."

I opened my eyes as more tears fell down my cheeks, and I smiled at the black palette above me.

"You can't appreciate the big things without the little things. I can't reach everything I'm dreaming of without being grateful for the steps that got me there. There'll be times where I'll trip, fall, or start from the beginning, but it'll only make reaching the top more satisfying. I forgot all