I feel like I only start to live in my dreams.
It’s always the same one: The sun is high in the sky, the sky is clear, and I can just about touch the cloud layer below me. I dip below the clouds, and watch as the ground rushes by, as I go faster and faster. I see many landmarks as I go. Manehattens tall skyscrapers, Canterlot Castle, Princess Twilights Castle, the lights of Los Pegasus. I see Vanhoover, Appleoosa, the Badlands and more. I am excited. I cannot stop smiling. I start to feel something....
And then I wake up.
I wake up to realize, I am no Pegasus. I am a Earth Pony and I will never fly. I have no wings, and no Pegasi has ever been married into my family. There is no chance of me ever, outside of leaving the farm, flying. I should just do my job as a Earth Pony, and not taint family tradition. Help out with the family farm, and marry the nice mare from the Pear farmers across the street. If you don’t, you won’t live a very good, or long life. Don't disappoint your parents and dishonor your family.
That’s what my family told me, the lie I lived and believed till I was an adult. I didn’t get my Cutie Mark until I realized just how stupid tradition like that can be. Now, I still live with my family. As much as they don’t want to admit it, they cannot deny I am anything but helpful around the farm; bucking trees, planting seeds, and any other chore I can do much quicker. Yet I’m still a failure to them, somehow. And they always remind me. Berry Crunch, my mother, never ceased telling me how much of a disappointment I am, and that I better marry the Pear Family’s daughter, or else. My father was no better. He didn’t believe me when I told him the first time. When he realized I was serious, he starved me. I ate only scraps after breakfast, lunch and dinner for a year, until I learned to live the lie. I had little grief for him when he passed. My brothers, all four of them, jeered and insulted me, always making sure to make my life harder. My sisters would make mean and horrible pranks, and I would end up washing twice a day because I’d been covered in flour, or applesauce.
And every day, I feel horrible getting out of bed, and feel worse and worse as the day progresses. It gets so bad that I feel the need for some time alone, away from the horrible parents, the insulting brothers, and the pranking sisters, So, every day, after all my chores, and all my work, I take the long walk up the valley the family farm is situated in. I have a nice place, a cliff, where I can see my the entire valley. I could probably touch the clouds if I tried. I sometimes bring my own food, a picnic of sorts, up there just to get away from everything.
Getting up there isn’t tiring, I am an Earth Pony, after all. Its long because I think. I keep thinking as I stand by the edge. It’s a long way down.
I think about what my family says to me daily, how they treat me. I think about how my life would be different if I were born in a different family, where my parents and siblings would encourage me. But I have to make do, don’t I?
But, what if... What if I.... I could just end it, and hope that,in a next life, I could be loved? So that those I called family and friends could love me? Should I? Would I be missed in any sense of the word? No one seems to care, or love me, so why go on? Why live in the hell hole that I do, in the hopes I get something out of it?
......I jump.
I’m still thinking, as I fall. But, for all the bad, and all the horrible things my family has done and most likely will do, is it worth it, to take that chance, or even die for someone else’s opinion? Isn’t mine the one that matters? Yes, only mine does. They have no say.
And with the wind in my face, spread-eagle, I laugh.
I laugh because they don’t decide who I am. I do. I laugh because I am capable of great things, and they are too blind to see. I laugh because I know who I am. I laugh because, if my family does not change, it’s their problem. I laugh because I laugh because my dream is no dream. Not anymore. I laugh because, in the face of death, I am not worried. I laugh because my Cutie Mark; the wing on a mountain, showed me just how true my dreams were. I laugh because I pull away from the ground, and I soar.
I soar through the air, and I see the valley below me. All the farms nearby, including mine, and the sole river running through. I can touch the clouds, and I can push them. I feel the wind in my face, and the sun on my back. I am happy, and I smile, bigger than I ever did before. I feel comfortable, more so than on the ground.
I have trust in the wings on my back. They may only be an outline, but I know they’re there. They feel safe, and free. I am free. I am different, and that’s alright. I have faced many hardships, and have suffered much, but my beliefs in a brighter side to everything, in a brighter future for me and everyone else, has, is, and will pull me and those I call friends through.
Maybe that's why my name is Higher Hopes.