As a sixteen-year-old girl, I haven’t been around all that long, even though it’s seemed like forever to me. The world is everything I want it to be, and nothing that it actually is; in my mind, I can be anything.

I can be a pilot, and forever fly the skies that I love so much. I can be a writer, and create the worlds I constantly am losing myself in. I can be an actress, and live the lives I’ve always wanted to be a part of. I can be a teacher, and mold the future I’ve always longed to see. I can be a singer, and use all my breath to touch hearts and ears. I can be an inventor, and create the tomorrow that the world needs. I can be an artist, and showcase another reality that is otherwise invisible. There’s a whole other dimension out there that I can be a part of, and nobody can stop me.

Even though this beginning makes it seem like this is going to be Some Huge Dramatic Thing, I’m writing this because I was watching the Academy Awards, and I want to talk about movies for a minute here. Movies are very important to me, and nobody ever seems to understand why. I want to try to explain it for a moment.

To me, a movie is way more than a movie. My friends, my family, people that I only briefly meet, they’re all curious as to why I get so emotional about movies, how I get so involved in a world that’s not real. They want to know why I get attached to these characters that don’t exist, and this reality that will never be.

A movie is something that really cannot be explained, no matter how much I stare at a word document and wait for words to come to me. No matter how long I stare out the window at my left at the stars, or how long I watch my fingers on the keyboard, words don’t exactly flow when I try to describe the indescribable. Movies are something of an escape.

Think about it for a minute, though. I can’t get to the stars, but in movies, I can. By watching a movie, I can be an astronaut who sees the Earth from the moon. I can be a pilot who stares down at the clouds beneath me. I can be an artist, throwing paint on a canvas and creating a masterpiece. I can be anything that I want.

If I watch a movie about a man visiting a lake with his friends, I’ll still get attached. Just because this isn’t something extraordinary to the average eye, doesn’t mean that this isn’t something extraordinary. A movie is something that a team of people, working hard and working together, have created. This is a world outside our own, something wonderful and simple and there.

As you can clearly tell, I’m struggling to get my point across here. My hands are freezing, but my face is hot and wet with tears. A lot of people who’ll read this will think I’m crazy, think that a movie is nothing important, something on the television is not something someone should get worked up about. But there’s someone out there who knows what I’m feeling. There’s someone out there who feels the same hollow beating of their heart that I feel when they’re watching a movie. There’s someone else besides me who feels like they leave a piece of themselves behind every time a movie ends and the credits roll.

I know that there’s someone else out there who gets the goosebumps when they hear a certain score. I know that someone besides me shivers when they see a couple kiss on the screen. I know for a fact that I’m not the only one who can cry when a character is lost. For us, it’s not just actors that read a script, jump into costumes, show up at a set for a few months, and get filmed reciting what they learned. For us, it’s people that become someone new, who disappear into a different world just for us. 

I hope I’ve been able to accurately convey what I feel to you, even though it feels like I’ve failed at pinning down this feeling exactly with words. Movies are something that grabs me, in a soul I’m not sure I have, in a part of my mind I never knew existed, and a piece of my heart that I will never use again.

To some extent, I know that I’ll never be a pilot, a writer, an actress, a singer, a teacher, an inventor, or an artist. I know that this a world full of disappointments, and I’m just getting started in it. I know that, more likely than not, I’ll become just like everyone else; a job I don’t like, a lot of debt, and more world problems than I care to think about.

Somehow, when I’m in the world of a movie, all of that just doesn’t seem so bad. When I’m in a movie, the world is everything I want it to be again, and I can be anything again. Because, when you think about it, a movie is a reality. These worlds are real, these characters do exist, and these realities already are.

I keep repeating “movie”, but you should also know it’s not only movies. It’s movies, it’s television shows, it’s plays, it’s books, it’s musicals, it’s comics, it’s music, it’s paintings, it’s sculptures. It’s anything with a story that pulls me into another reality, and spits me back out with more of myself than I went in with, and a piece of my very being still attached to the work.

A movie is another reality, and I know a part of me will always belong in that reality. Every movie becomes a part of me, shaping me, being a part of who I am. I am all these realities, they have built me, and I love it.