The Roar of Realization
I don’t want some hopeful kid to look into my eyes when I’m an old hag and pray to some god that they don’t end up the way I did. I don’t want to shut doors. I don’t want to distinguish my potential. I don’t want to be trapped in a false reality.
I want to live in every moment I’m fortunate enough to have on this earth— and I don’t want to cheapen those moments by limiting them or not being here fully to experience their adventure.
I want my life to be memorable; not to those who will try to comprehend its legacy, but to my old dying self. I want to be able to lose myself in the sheets of my deathbed over the building anticipation of exploring the beyond; of finally knowing! I want to always crave knowledge, even with my last housed thought.
I want my mother and my father to experience pride when they look at old photographs of me, and I want them to miss me when their spirits pass nostalgically through the halls of the house we shared in my youth. And I want the children that hold the Wagner name long after I have passed to understand and carry that same pride, because they will know that it is through them that greatness continues to thrive.
I want to have lived meaningfully. I want to have lived coherently. I want for myself what is real and not what can be found only in strange dreams and visions. I want to leave this world as a respectable woman who knew balance during her life. I want to accept my death as a peaceful close to my ever-growing pursuit of rebirth.
I will never believe that it is too late to save myself from some acidic and grueling fate, I will refuse substitute mediocrity for brilliance, and I will not accept or believe that what I am now is all I will be. My potential has yet to be met, my purpose yet to be found. My lust for knowledge will never be quenched because I know it can never be mine in total, and that alone will give me reason to live.
My name is Emily Wagner. Great things do not await me, because great things do not wait, but excellence is hidden everywhere and all around me, and I will find it.
