Ethereal (Re-Writing)

Foreword

I remember the day I turned ten years old. There was nothing outwardly memorable about that day in particular; I don’t remember what kind of cake I had, whether or not I had to make my bed,  if I received exactly what I’d wanted, or if my little sister had once again stolen the show, as she often did.

The memory was more of an awareness; the realization that I’d gone from living in single digits to double. I realized, in a ten year old way, that time moves us all in ways that we don’t even grasp until the moments pass right by.

That day, as darkness pushed away the cotton candy clouds to make room for a curtain of stars, I settled down on our creaky, worn out trampoline and stared up at the sky. We’d never been a religious family, but I’d been to church a few times. I wasn’t so sure about greater powers and fate and destiny, or anything that dramatic. I did sometimes wonder if Earth was maybe a forgotten project that someone had started with every intention of making it an oasis, like a Garden of Eden that no one had attended to in a very long time.

For some reason, with the knowledge of just a single decade in my head, I felt as though my time was running out far too quickly. As it seemed to me, with the world moving faster every year, that so much of human life was lost in waiting. Jitters fluttered around my stomach as though I’d forgotten an important assignment or neglected to walk my baby sister home from daycare. There truly was no rhyme or reason to the way I felt, but as I looked up into the sky, I knew that something in this world or perhaps another was truly infinite, while the mortal clock of my world kept ticking away.

For me, the consciousness I felt as I studied the stars was the closest I’d ever gotten to a spiritual experience. I wondered if someone or something else out in the great beyond was thinking exactly what I was thinking, or if what we all experienced was all there was.

Every beginning I’d ever known had an end, whether immediate or eventual, and though I knew I should feel as though I had forever in front of me, I just felt ten years closer to whatever came next. The entire balance of the universe weighed on my scrawny shoulders that night. I couldn’t decide if the adults got their answers with time, and you had to be old before you learned the secrets of the world, or if no one really had any answers at all.

I could never settle on a birthday wish in the spur of the moment as I blew out my candles, with everyone starting at me expectantly. I always fretted about it the night before, wanting to make a wish that was better than the previous year. After all, I had no way of knowing how many of these wishes I would get, and as it was I only got them once a year.

In hindsight, I really had no way of knowing whether or not any of them would come true, because I always wished for my future self. Ever since I could remember, I’d choose a candle on my cake that I felt was special. I’d write down my wish on a piece of paper, and tape it to the candle after I’d blown all the other ones out. In private, after my party, I’d choose what I wanted, add it to the rest, and shut it away for another year. That year, I wished that by the time I reached the next decade, I’d find someone who had the answers I was looking for. I figured that if I knew them early on, I didn’t have to get old waiting for time to tell me just what exactly life was all about.

There was no way to know then what the price of knowledge could cost. I’d wished many times since that day, but looking back I had to wonder whether I’d brought the world crashing down in just that one moment; as simple as that piece of paper wrapped around a wax candle, or if it had been teetering on the edge of destruction all this time, waiting for the moment when I was least prepared before toppling down on my life. That wish was the first to change my life, and by the time I knew, there was no going back.