Welcome to the Dark Side

Prologue

I never considered myself particularly lucky. In my mind, I was just a simple girl with an ordinary life. Everyone else told me different. Somehow, a combination of perfectly ordinary and everyday events had conspired to morph me into something unique, something special, and I had very little choice in the matter.

My friends and countless others claimed there were millions upon millions of girls who would have killed to have had what I had. I was adored by the student body and faculty alike. I had a near perfect grade point average and a great group of friends. I was a musician, an athlete, and a community activist, and to top it off, I had an absolutely gorgeous boyfriend. The world was at my fingertips. What more could I have wanted? My life was perfect.

My life was also an illusion. The only imperfection in my life was the entire idea of perfection. My life wasn’t perfect. Far from it. Only I didn’t know. I didn’t know, nobody did, that I was on a collision course with my own ignorance. Knowing what I do now, I should have seen it. It was inevitable. Having been so high for so long, it was a given that I would fall. And hard. For what comes up must come down. It’s the law of gravity.

I sometimes wish my current self could go back and shake the past me out of apathy and out of the illusion I was trapped in so I could save myself from what was to follow. When the future should have been bright, I was standing at the edge of a bottomless abyss I didn’t know I was about to fall into.

There was never anyone there to catch me, and I’m still falling. That’s the problem with perfection. There’s no one to tell you how wrong you are.