space

I'd like to be an astronaut. I wouldn't like the schooling or the process of application and the effort and the luck and the struggle and everything, but I do like to imagine what it would be like if I was there, if I was in space staring back at Earth. I can't imagine the feeling. I can only imagine what I think it would feel like, to see the world that way. To be so far away from everyone and everything I've ever known, all my memories and all the people who love me. I think I'd miss everybody and I'd want to come back down. I'd miss my parents and my best friends and my teachers and trees and my grandma and my brother and grass and the ground and everything. I already miss all of those things every day. I'd think of the lake I almost drowned in, of the hallways in middle school, of the snowy walkways around the dorms of my old university, and of my grandma's pool, which hasn't been re-plastered in over ten years because she's too tired to do it herself anymore. I'd think of everything that happened down here. I think I'd hate to be up there, but I still want to know. Maybe it would permanently change me for the worse, and I'd be bitter about how fragile everyone pretends not to be. Maybe I'd realize how small our problems are in comparison. Maybe I'm not supposed to know what it's like, to have that kind of perspective... maybe it would torture me. Maybe I'm stuck imagining what it would be like, and I'm better off that way.