The Courage to Compete by Abbey Curran

Author:Abbey Curran
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Miss Iowa

Before I went to the Miss Iowa contest, I was sitting in my dorm room waiting for life to happen. I had been like a caterpillar, yearning to be a butterfly, wondering if I would ever evolve into something more, something better than what I was at the time.

Back then, I would wish on the moon every night. Of course, I still prayed, but wishing is different than praying. A prayer is something you say to God; a wish is something you whisper to your own heart. I love wishing on the moon. I think people take the moon for granted. It’s the biggest, most beautiful thing in the sky, and people don’t take the time to wish on it. Well, I have always wished on the moon. I’d wish to be beautiful, to be successful. I’d wish to find my way in life, and of course I’d wish to be loved.

Just as I had my wishes, I still had my dreams, which at that time were mostly focused on things I could do to make life better for the people I loved the most: I could buy my grandma a new home; I could buy my dad a new tractor so he doesn’t have to get upset because he has to keep repairing his old one; I could buy new carpet for our basement so when it floods my mom won’t be frustrated and sad. I could hire a twenty-four-hour-a-day companion for my ninety-one-year-old friend and buy a wheelchair van for my Miss You Can Do It contestants. I could donate money to amazing doctors like my ob-gyn who, by assuring me that I can definitely have babies, gave me peace of mind and changed my life, and I know she could do the same for other women with disabilities if only I could bring them together. Another thing I dreamed of doing was making sure that everyone in the Kewanee nursing home received beautiful flowers on Christmas and Valentine’s Day.

When I told these dreams to other people, they would roll their eyes or even laugh. But after I won Miss Iowa, I wasn’t the dreaming dork anymore—not to my family or my friends. Suddenly, for the first time ever, I was it! I would think back to all those times when I felt so bad because no one wanted to help me or invite me to a party. But it was all worth it, because the sadness then made the happiness now even greater. I was finally wanted, admired, and appreciated. People I didn’t even know would stop me on the street to say congratulations and to ask what being in a pageant was really like. They looked at me in a way that no one had looked at me before. Before, when I was talking about something good that had happened to me, people would look at me as if they didn’t believe a word I said. Now they nodded and smiled as I talked, and made me feel that they really were interested in what I was saying.

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