What is a wish to you? Is it a desire? A feeling? Or a sort of hope? People find magical things such as wishing on stars to be too childish. Once you grow up, you’re too old to have dreams and wants that relate to magic in any sort of way. Why? At what age do we lose our sense of wonder? What triggers in our brains that makes us long for our lost childhood, when so many of us would watch the bottomless, dark night sky in hopes that, hiding behind all of the other glittering stars, there might be one for us specifically. A special star that would listen to no one else’s prayers, no one else’s worries. Yours alone. Then we become older, as time never takes a bribe from even the wealthiest people. Perhaps it is not time’s fault, but instead our own faults for letting the time get ahead of us. What if we didn’t?

I often ponder what it might be like for me to have been born earlier than I was. I don’t mean premature (we’ll get to that later), I mean to say what if I was a mother right now? Or a grandmother? What would college life be like? It seems so far away that I can only dream about it now through the eyes of a young child, one who has yet to experience the bitter taste of the world’s richest dinner called life. Though, that is probably true. I know of college debts, I in no way understand them. I see drama in workplaces, but am never involved in such situations. Put that together and it means I view adult life as the life. Besides, you spend most of your time on earth as one of those so-called adults,  you better start preparing now. In my haste, though, I always seem to forget that the “adult life” is not the only life I will be living. I yearn for independence, a path I create by making my own decisions, no matter how beneficial or not they may be.That’s why spending time in the open world, no parental guidance needed, sounds perfect to me. I have come to the conclusion that those kinds of thoughts are bad for me and I must overcome them, so I might try to enjoy being a teenager just a smidgen longer.

Another frequent occurrence in my mind is questioning what my life could have been like had I been born with a disability or had some sort of disorder. Would I be able to manage without my appendages? I imagine if that were to happen I would be constantly frustrated with myself, having to rely on other people since birth to simply move. I give my respect to any man or woman who must live with prosthetic limbs (which are usually made by other people so technically, they are still relying on other people). A physical disability would not be so horrible, though, as a mental disability. My greatest asset is my mind. I live inside my head, watching society move around me and gaining information about anything I want to to and sometimes what I don’t. My mind is an oasis of knowledge that I can use to rise and conquer this grueling world that I have not yet lived. Even as a teenager, I am building up my brain for a cruel, ruthless reality to slap me around so hard I won’t want to get back up again. My mind is my strongest power. So, what if I didn’t have it? The slight notion of it frightens me, honestly. The sheer fact that if one small mistake had transpired in my DNA, I would have been an entirely different person, possibly void of all emotion and concepts of thought.

Why is it that I hear these concerns in my head like a wailing siren, ready to take me to a prison for occupying these inconceivable thoughts? One of my thinking dilemmas has yet to occur and the other stays in my past, haunting the what ifs of my mind. I crave the magical moments in life-I stare at the moon and hum with the flowers-but I also ache to be on my own, an independent woman who has only herself to worry about. Where is the border between the two? Would my star be able to tell me? Or, the real question, is there a border? Do I have to find it? I would say no if my mind did not lean towards yes by giving me these hypothetical inquiries that lay over me as if they were a heavy leaden blanket, intent on sealing me away from the world I should be facing. I currently have one wish and that is to remain the way I am without losing myself to the what ifs that I so easily unearth from the depths of my thoughts. But wishing is only for children, right?