"The world is full of magic, you just have to believe in it"

"The world is full of magic, you just have to believe in it."

I had my real best friends growing up--and then I had Joey Potter, Topanga Lawrence, and Brooke Davis to teach me about hardships--getting through the tough times--and moving on to the good times. I had the creek outside of Dawson's house, the playground in which Cory and Topanga reconciled their love, and I had the river court in a fictional town called Tree Hill to escape to. And--boy did I escape.

It's been six years, and eight seasons, since I first left reality and stepped foot on the river court. And this weekend, I stepped onto the river court--for real.

And while the magic of the lights, the camera, the action wasn't there--the magic that the river court itself had on me--was.

Rather than a light shining down on Lucas Scott and Nathan Scott squaring off in one on one basketball match, the sun beat down illuminating my own aspirations, my own memories, my own moments of tranquility and passion and love. I believe we all have a place that works like this, for us. We all have a place that we have spent seconds on--minutes on--hours on, just dreaming of a bigger future, one that shines the same way our best fictional friend's dreams do on the television screen. It could be the side of a mountain that we climb when we need to get ourselves off the ground. It could be the first art studio we painted in. It could be the kitchen we cooked our first full course meal in. It could be the tree house we built in the middle of the woods to hide out in when our parents got angry and called us by our middle name. It could be anywhere.

For me--it's my little league baseball field, where on many occasions the bright light was the sun that did shine as my team won or lost baseball games, where I got a base hit or struck out, where I caught a fly ball-or made an error. Like the river court, for the fictional characters, my baseball field acted for me as an analogy to life--with ups and downs, proud moments and errors, home-runs and strikeouts. And no matter the moments I spent there--good or bad, I never stopped dreaming there.

Standing in the middle of the river court, in which the hoops have been taken down (so as for fans not to steal them), I am reminiscent of a time that I sat alone on my old little league baseball field--staring at the mound, the one I used to stand on. Despite it's tiny slope, it's the highest point on the ball field. And whenever I stepped foot on it--I felt on top of the world. That still happens now.

And that reality is better than any fiction.