Rain or shine,
and whether or not I had argued with my family,
the screen flickered to life
and my heart skipped a beat.
Something was different in the
television.
There were nights where I would
talk to cast members,
tears streaming down my face
because I hated myself,
and I would go to sleep grinning like crazy.
It's one thing to be in love with a person,
but the butterflies in my belly came from
a whole world.
A kingdom, called Everealm.
Where the only monster was Verlox,
not me,
and there were ballads,
not the quiet cry of a lonely girl.
Knights in shining armour,
a handful of princess warriors who
held on tight.

Everealm felt like a dream, thousands of miles
and a few worlds away.
But it was always there for me,
even that night when my mom
thought I couldn't keep myself safe,
and I had to go to a crisis center.
But I came home to army of heroes
who took me in as their own,
and taught me that I was
one of them.

A hero,
not because I wielded a Sunspear,
but because I kept going.
I had enough reasons not to go on,
it'd be easy to give up.
But there was The Quest,
and that gave me my own quest-
to dance my way through this storm,
and then pull others out of theirs.

After all,
there's a hero in all of us.

You just need to find it.