That Ordainary Box

• Tahlia Selzer, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2014

I was always a cautious person, a shy person, a nervous person. I never knew what to say and what to do. That is until I found the box. Yes, this ordinary cardboard box changed my life. Sometimes I put this box on my head and I felt powerful, happy and confident, like I could rule the world. Other times I would leave it off reminding myself what I used to be sad, shy, powerless. Slowly but surely over the years I became dependent on the box. Keeping it on for extended periods of time, never taking it off. Over the years the box deteriorated as it should, but somewhere inside always believed that it was special that this one box would stay. The day I woke and saw the box crumpled into a pile of dust, something inside me cracked. I finally realised that this box didn’t make me this happy, charming, confident girl but that all along it was me, and at that moment in my dressing gown with a cup of tea I started to believe.