INCASE OF EMERGENCY (My back-pocket wish)

If I had one wish, I wouldn't ask for money or to be famous or even for someone to love me. I'd ask for space. Space to be me without getting told I'm too much. Space to pick my own path without everyone handing me a map. Space to grow into whoever I was meant to be before the world told me to shrink. I've spent so long making myself smaller so I don't make people uncomfortable. So I fit. So I'm "good." And I got so good at it that nobody even noticed I was disappearing. But if wishes were honest, mine would be this: I want a life that's actually mine. Not borrowed. Not somebody else's plan. Not something I settled for. *Mine.* I want to wake up one day and realize all those locked doors were just pretend. That the scary stuff isn't as big as I thought. That the future isn't a tiny hallway— it's wide open. And maybe that's why this wish is so hard. Because wanting to be free means admitting that deep down, I think I might actually deserve it. There's a girl inside me who never stopped reaching for the handle. Who keeps confusing "getting by" with "really living" and then feeling the difference. If my wish came true, I think I'd be brave. Not the loud kind. The quiet kind. The kind that walks into a room and doesn't apologize for breathing. But since it hasn't come true yet, I learned something else: How to keep hoping anyway. How to keep dreaming even when there's no proof. How to keep my hand on the lock even when it won't turn. And maybe that's its own kind of wish come true.