What the F is Celebrating 10 Years

A wish is such an inherently hopeful concept. We attempt to will our desires into existence with only the power of our wanting. For as long as I can remember, I have been an avid wisher, capitalizing on eyelashes, birthday candles, and every 11:11 that I managed to notice. I often stare at a clock in the minutes approaching 11:11, itching to make my wish. I have experimented with strategies, saying “I wish” 11 times over in my head, working out the perfect phrase so that the universe will understand what I want and not nick me on a technicality.

In middle school, my best friend and I came up with the idea of making our own fairy dust—we mixed together multicolored sparkles until we each felt that we had the right ratios of hues, and then we wrote little poems to use as an incantation while we sprinkled the fairy dust over ourselves. For years, I used that fairy dust every night before the first day of school, wishing for a good year. I still occasionally pull out the little glass bottle before a big event, making a wish and hoping for the best. Wishes have been a form of ritual, or at least, my way of at least attempting to bend the universe to my will.

I think my wishes used to be bigger, more specific, more straightforward and plain. Last year, one of my biggest wishes came true: I fell in love for the first time. For a while, it felt magical, as if I had willed this person into existence. In a way, maybe I did. It was longdistance, and never officially anything, but it was also one of the most formative relationships that I have ever had. I thought that what we had transcended distance, but it turns out the distance was what was sustaining us. In person, the many ways we were incompatible were much more apparent. My first heartbreak was jagged. I was blindsided by a situation which I hadn’t accounted for: We were in the same place, but he chose someone else.

It turns out that wishing can also mean you project your hopes onto another person. When he turned out not to be who I thought he was, it hurt. A lot. I became less sure of myself and of my judgment. How had I been so willfully blind? The emotional fallout left me reeling. My goals became blurrier, less-defined shapes in my mind that I couldn’t quite pin down. I lost faith that I could accomplish them.

As I processed my loss of confidence, I decided that I needed to take a gap year, to be alone somewhere and work a small job and recenter myself. I found a book by Olga Tokarczuk, The Lost Soul, a short illustrated book that resonates with me on many levels. The book’s premise is that souls move slower than bodies, so a man who has lost his soul goes to a cottage in the woods and waits for it to eventually catch up to him. That’s how I felt for a while, and maybe I still do a bit. I’ve read that book repeatedly in the past several months. While at first I thought that it meant that I needed to isolate myself and get back to the basics, I’ve realized that it really means that I need to get back to my basics. It’s not about being alone—it’s about being purposeful in what is important to me. I’ve spent the school year spending a lot of time with friends, both old and new. I call my mom; I try to call my grandmother regularly; I send letters occasionally; sometimes I write letters that I never send. I wake up in the morning and make myself tea and breakfast. I clean my room, something that used to be too tiring for me but now feels centering. I turn in my assignments—I research and learn and push myself to create things that will make me proud. I cook for myself and let myself go to bed early. I prioritize rest in a way that I never used to.

My life has felt slower recently, more purposeful. My coming year is still a blank, but my faith in myself becomes a little stronger everyday. I can take care of myself—I can make my goals reality. I’m making wishes again—I’m reconnecting to what I want. I’ve spent so much of my life wanting, longing, yearning—I want my life to be strictly for living, experiencing every day to its fullest and feeling centered. I want my soul to be firmly planted in my body.

I think my goals have shifted in the past year. I’m trying not to wish for other people or places to want me; instead, I’m trying to be more purposeful about the people and places that I give my time to. I’m wishing to build a life that I love, one in which I am self-aware, in which I am surrounded by people and projects that make me feel inspired. When I graduate this year, I’ll pull out my jar of fairy dust, sprinkle some over my head, and wish for the best, whatever that is.