Cartoon Girls and Dreams

Last semester, as people shipped themselves back with a return address carefully written on their hands, I fell in love with a cartoon girl.

love-starved boy alone in his dorm + 

energetic girl with little time but lots of life  = 

 _________ ?

It's not a tough equation to solve. But the thing is, I think this silly kind of thing is exactly what I need.

See, she dies in the end. Its embarrassing to say, but it was very traumatic for me. I haven't yet had someone die on me in "real life", so I'm not sure how close it came to the real deal, but her struggle, even now, is still very hard to think back on.

See, I'm always restless, and I was more so after everything went down. There's always a fire lit under my ass, sometimes stoked by others, most of the time stoked by me. And my time with those animated frames of a girl was powerful kindling.

It took me a while to realize it, but the hunger I have is a need to tell a story. See, the fire is my dream; my bonfire offering to life. I pray nightly at the base of those twisting flames, hoping to be gifted a vision from those gatekeepers of happiness. 

So my question is this: if a loveless loner like myself can push forward through this muddy life with nothing but a few pictures, 

Why give up on those dreams?

Outside of video games and cats, we don't refer to a life in plural because we don't get more than one (shocker, I know). 

So why settle? 

See, I settled. Not more than a year ago, in a misguided attempt to avoid suffering, I picked a college major off an internet list. It didn't work. I suffered in a different way.

See, I settled. Not more than a year ago, I told myself that I lacked the furnace that could keep me chugging towards that far away dream.

You have to find small things at first to keep that trash-can fire of a dream going. Eventually, when you're crazy enough, you can make logs out of twigs. You can pile on really trivial things and watch that fire roar.

Like a cartoon girl, for example.