To find that acceptance letter in the mail. To go off with their smiles and waves of goodbyes. To find a place that fits me like an active site on a transport protein. To thrive, on the challenges set before me. To succeed, and gather the fruits, the bountiful, plentiful fruits of the dark, desolate, and painful times I worked so desperately to escape from. To extend my hand and drag up the ones who let me stand on their shoulders when they themselves were bone-weary. To bring them out from the darkness they found themselves in after giving me their own light. To shower them with the fruits of their work. To find a person I can work hard with, fight and overcome challenges with, and hold on to while carrying a future that will stand on my shoulders. To give up my light, given to me by the past, used in the present, and invested in the future, for those who will extend their own hands in gratitude.
Dreams flit through my mind even as the shadows of self pity, poverty, and cowardice bring up the trying times when I feel like the entire world can see how little I'm worth. I think of the failures and disappointments I will face and am facing. The shadows pull me back, and the harder they pull the more I resist. But I don't just resist: I swing, kick, stumble, crawl, climb, and flip, then grow stronger and faster, moving through walls and defying gravity. I am fueled by belief that I can live my dreams, even if my peers disagree, cut me off, shun me, hunt me, and break me. I resist and my dreams grow humungous, expanding as far as the eye can see, beyond the feasible and into the realm of impossible. They grow until they eclipse the darkness and fill my whole being with a warmth that lingers so that after the world turns against me and after my tears dry, heartbeats slow, and mind unclenches, I can dream.