Star light, star bright

For as long as I can remember, I've had 2 wishes. I used them on all stars, wishbones, and birthday cake blow-outs. One wish was to be skinny. I remember using that one for the first time when I was 7 years old. My mom told me to make a wish on the first star I saw in the sky, but not to tell anyone or it wouldn't come true. I wished with all my heart that I would be thin and I didn't tell a soul. As you can tell, the results of that were highly unsatisfactory.

The other wish is for something that probably sounds really bad, but I'm going to assure everyone right now that I'm fine. From the time I was little, I've wished that the universe would make it so that I could no longer be alive. Of course, I've always been overly concerned with the welfare of those I care about, so my wish always had a caveat. I only wanted to cease living if everyone around me would be okay with it. It was more like a wish to have never been born. I wasn't too fond of this whole living thing and wanted to simply disappear off the planet and, more importantly, from everyone's memory.

I was about 10 years old the first time I thought about killing myself. Life as I knew it was full of crying and being teased and bullied and beat up, so not existing sounded...peaceful. I knew exactly how I would do it, too, but I immediately changed my mind once I pictured my mom and grandma having to deal with my death. They would be utterly devastated and I just could not do that to them. Ever since then, I've held on to that desire to disappear. I know it's silly. I don't believe in superstition or gods or anything, yet I still wish my wish.

Tonight I was watching television and an ad came on for a new show about someone who is immortal. The ad flashed through all the problems that come with immortality - you don't grow old but everyone around you does, everyone you care for eventually dies, etc. You know how it goes. It's been done to death in literature and movies and, now, even TV shows. It's the type of show that would normally make me roll my eyes and change the channel but tonight, the ad made me think how humans are always searching for ways to live longer but how long would be enough? 100 years? 200 years? Would we want an extended life if no one else had one?

For some reason, all these thoughts on immortality and life and death resulted in a burst of light in my brain. It sounds utterly cheesy, but all of a sudden I could see that life IS good. That I think I would rather be breathing than not. That our time here really is a blip and that I have to enjoy it as much as I can. That my apartment has been around longer than most people. I've been told these things dozens of times before and even though I could agree, logically, I never felt it. And now I do. And now I have to find another thing to wish for on that first star.