If The Sky Is The Limit, Then I’ll Build A Bridge Up To It

As a child, I was very curious about the world around me. I didn’t believe in boundaries. Yuuki and I took one look at the plastic white fence put up around our yard and we knew something had to be done about it.

One minute, my mother would look up and we would be happily playing with each other under the shade of the trees. The next, we would be climbing over that white fence, off on a new adventure. That large yard next to my house has changed so much over the years. It started as a perfect grassy play place, where Yuuki and I would run through the sheets that hung on the clothesline like they were thin, fluttery tunnels. Then, there were the swings. I remember the day when my father put up that swing set, how Yuuki and I pressed our hands into the wet cement that held it down. Dad had carved our names into that cement, next to our tiny handprints. I bet I can find those handprints today, if I looked hard enough.

My sister and I spent hours on the swings together. We swung so high that my parents’ friends got worried just watching us. But, my parents knew that this was simply just what Yuuki and I did. There was no such thing as boundaries. The sky was the limit, and we were determined to reach it, one swing at a time. To this day, I still love to go down to the playground in town and just swing until my hands get sore.

After the swing set was gone, Yuuki and I were left with one of those colorful, cube-shaped jungle gym things. It was more than just a big hunk of plastic to us. Sometimes, it was a house. One of us was a mother, the other a daughter. Or one of us was a mermaid in disguise, and the other was a fairy. Sometimes, we would just climb to the top of it and simply talk, but not conversationally. We would make up stories. There would be plotlines, character names, imaginary worlds and people, dialogue, all made up in the minds of my sister and I. I clearly remember one of our stories, about a girl named Tammy who lived in a futuristic world where everyone’s names began with a T, and they always drank tea. I remember one of the other characters would prance along the railing of her balcony, singing "Wake Me Up When September Ends" in the rain.

Sometimes, we made up our stories with dolls, created a world out of the smooth top of the green dresser in our room. In a world of so many female dolls, there was only one Ken doll, and every doll fought over him, because they didn’t want to be stuck with the lone Ken head, detached from his body in an incident involving a kiss scene with a doll with a rather large head.

From the start, it was all about the stories. It was all about where my imagination could take me.

Have you ever asked yourself that question, that one that you’re asked so often when you’re a child?

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

In the years between then and now, I’ve been constantly changing my mind, usually settling on unattainable, eccentric wishes, like being an actress or a singer or a fashion designer or a hairstylist. But, college is coming up fast, and about a year ago I realized, Whoa. I have to start thinking about my future. I spent a short period of my life completely confused as to what I wanted to do with my future, but now I don’t know why I didn’t even realize the answer was in front of my face.

I want to be a writer.

The stories I made up as a child, the compliments on my short stories and poetry in middle school, the substitute teacher who told me I was "the definition of a writer," my eighth grade English teacher who told me that I should definitely pursue a writing career, my current English teacher who told me almost the exact same thing after reading my reflective essay about January.

I have something here, and I want to do something with it. Who says I can’t publish a novel before I’m eighteen? Who says that my life is worthless when people I’ve never even met say that a blog written about it is sweet, inspiring, amazing? Who says I can’t get anywhere?

Everyone starts out on the ground, but the sky is the limit.