Hillary's Compass

Family vacations are supposed to be perfect. You wait for them, mark the date on your calendar, and raid your closet; picking out floral tops, high wasted shorts, and flip-flops; piecing together an outfit that is bound to get some guy's attention.

Your parents tell you to bottle your excitement, but you feel like a shook up bottle of soda; fizzy, ready to explode.

Your in a good mood. You let your little sister wear your favorite mini skirt and borrow your lipgloss you bought with your own money, and you have already promised your baby brother that he can have the window seat because he has never been on a plane before.

The day of the trip, you arrive to the airport early. You bound out of the car, wrench your Lily Pulitzer suitcase from the truck, and zoom into the airport - giving a curt nod to a security guard on the way in.

When you are finally on the plane, its serendipitous.You drink your iced coffee you got before take off, put on your headphones, and watch that 80's movie your Mom adores. Sounds perfect, right?

That is how I acted when I was young; a middle school girl that loved to go on adventures. I drew my favorite landmarks in my notebook, compasses on my jeans. I collected keychains with my name on it, and sent colorful postcards to my best friends.

Family vacations were my world. We hiked up mountains in North Carolina, waterskied in Mexico, snow tubed in Colorado, shopped at little boutiques in Paris, ate at beachside eateries in Jamaica, and winked at Japanese boys in Tokyo.

But when I turned twenty one, my love for traveling became tarnished.

When you look at our family vacation photos from about six years, we look perfect, happy; me wearing an expensive fur coat, white tights, a thousand dollar dress, and bejeweled flats, smiling. But when I started visiting poorer countries, having sex with improvised boys in dirt shacks, and walking down musky market places in my Burberry skirt getting served by ladies practically wearing paper bags, I slowly became embarrassed of myself. I started to change. I shed the Pandora rings from my fingers, the gaudy jewelry from my neck, the colorful makeup from my face, and broke my Costa sunglasses into two pieces.

When you look at my family vacation pictures now, my hair is black - pulled up into a messy bun - and I'm wearing ripped jeans and combat boots I bought from discount marketplaces.

I now look like an exotic animal next to my blonde family in their expensive skin, but I can't be a millionaires' daughter anymore; a fake princess wearing a diamond crusted crown.

I just want to be Hillary Ann Tanner.

I told my parents I was done going on vacations with them after our last trip to Miami, Florida. I am currently studying occupational therapy at this little school in Illinois that is smack dap in the middle of farm land, in a sea of corn.

I didn't want to go to an ivy league school or one in a big city. I wanted to get away from my snobby sister, my perfectly toned brother, my picky mother, and abusive father. Once they paid for my schooling and I got my degree, I would never see them again. I would go overseas and disappear, blot myself from existence.

I only have two years left in college, and, I hope, in that time, I will find someone to run away with. We could see the world, cloth the poor, fed the hungry, look at laughable art in museums, drink warm coffee on blistering days, go into thrift stores and buy mountains of used clothes for under twenty dollars, and live in a small flat with a big view.

He would have to be a beached adventurer - one that didn't have a passport, nonetheless, a ship or a compass to explore with. Most of all, he would have to look at me and see a regular girl living in a fucked up world; one not anchored down by her family or the money stitched into the seams of her clothes. He would have to see a girl with a heart, that gets high off of the fact that she might finally find her Neverland; every adventurers' and sea captain's dream home.