Do you dream?

I once had a dream.

So many different dreams.

Travel.

Write a book.

Have a dog.

Possess a job that I love.

Make enough money to live the life I want to live.

Make my parents proud.

Be happy.

Do something extraordinary. Explore the crevices of the human heart I’d never travel, you know, like maybe find someone to love in a way I’d never loved before.

But you know, dreams are just dreams…

3 years till the big 30. At this point, friends have gotten married. Weddings I don’t go to, well you know, because I don’t know these people anymore. Maybe we went to the same college once, but they were the people I watched from far away. That I heard about.

Weddings though. Cakes, friends, families, traditional delicacies, dresses, suits, oh yes and drinking. Lots of drinking. Because what’s a wedding without drinking, right?

But I don’t go to weddings. I no longer know these people but their names.

No, I’m not sad. No reason to be disappointed.

Though five years ago I did constantly say jokingly, “five more years and then we’re 30.” And look at that now. At the speed of light, time has passed. Down to three. Soon I’ll be old, living the real life crisis everyone so blatantly talks about like it’s a joke, but we all know it’s not a joke. We talk that way because being depressing is not accepted. Isn’t that right?

When I met my friends for the first time in what, two years? Must be two years. We all graduated at different intervals from college. Friends and family split at a point in time. Friends split up quicker, because everyone has dreams and goals. To be a teacher, to become the wise one, the be the one who reaches the top the fastest. To achieve that acknowledgement, to become someone with a name. So we all split at graduation, move out of town, become the real you.

So we met, caught up. And there’s laughter and the usual “what should we do?” Alcohol and guys are old for us now. That’s the excitement that only exists in the early 20’s. Cause when you finally become legal at 21, you drink and drink and drink every weekend. And now when we look back, where did all that money come from? And all that drama that occurred in college. My friends and I had a chat room where we gossiped, trash talked. Yep, those were the days.

Now…now it’s three years before we’re all 30.

Why 30 is such a big number?

30 means we’re older. No longer in our youth. That we have to start living up to our real life responsibilities. Because at 30, we should have careers. Professions. Something to define us.

That’s something…I don’t have.

Bomi, she’s an intelligent artist. Big dreams. Ambitious. Intelligent. And attractive. Guys like her. Her parents…I don’t know about them. I know her father called her a over the phone once. Shocking, isn’t it? But she has sisters and brothers. Most of them are natural born artists. Now that’s something to be jealous about. Born with talent.

Out of college she wanted to become a teacher. Funny story short, she complained daily about how stupid her kids were. Everything she taught came out of the books and yet her students couldn’t answer quiz answers right. That was funny for me, but then she quit. She wanted to do what she loved, and that was drawing. She likes boy x boy stuff, like .

Literally, her parents took her car from her to make her stay when she wanted to move to L.A. to draw. Basically, she got a job there already. She was going there anyway. Then they threatened to disown her. So she let them take the car and left, but now she’s living the dream and that’s all that matters, right? She has a dream, she owns it.

Chorong, the oldest of us, still lives in the same city as me. Works part time at a crafts store near me. But we’re busy. We rarely meet. She lives with her boyfriend. They started dating in college. Isn’t that cute? Once we were drinking, I saw them kiss in the dark when they thought no one was looking. But I saw.

I know no one’s perfect, but she has a love life. She’s smart, understanding, and compassionate. She’s good with people. She and her boyfriend have a lot of friends. Once, it was just the two of us drinking. She confessed that her boyfriend cheated on her once. She made me promise not to tell a soul. I promised. I think that’s what brought us a bit closer.

And then there’s Eunji. Liked by everyone. We’re all jealous, because she carries conversations so easily. She knows a ton of people, she’s merely acquainted with all the people around our age. Maybe even older, maybe even younger. She clicks with everyone. I don’t know how she does it. But she does. We all envy her.

When her grandma passed away, we all went to the funeral to see her even though we knew no one. And when the guy she liked flirted with another girl, we trash talked her. She’s that kind of special. I’ve known her the longest out of our friends. Almost 15 years. Same elementary, same middle, same high school. Almost 15 years. A long time ago, she told me she was molested by her boyfriend. She was young when it happened, but it made me angry. When we college girls went for a night out at the bars just to hang and got pretty much drunk, she made a date with someone she never met before. Pissed me off. At a house part afterward, a guy friend inappropriately cornered her as if they had something going on. I told her I didn’t like it. Because she deserves better than that.

But you know even so, she has a boyfriend now. She’s happy. After all those flings and getting hurt, I am happy for her. Because she has something. She has a good job that doesn’t fall into the line of retail and doesn’t have to deal with stupid customers day in and day out. And I’m happy for her.

All I can say about myself is that I have too many wishes.

I wish.

I wish.

I wish.

And I don’t have much. I have nothing. I’m still at home. My brother took my dogs to live with him because he has his own house and they can run around however they like when they’re not trapped in one room because my parents despise the dogs. I work the graveyard shift. I deal with stupid customers who sometimes like to gawk at me and make conversation when I’m not in the mood. And even when I do nothing at night I come back home at 8AM feeling like and I’m exhausted and just want to lie in bed all day, which I do. On my weeks off, I wake up at 5AM and just lie in bed because I no longer want to get up.

So I wish, I wish, and I wish some more.

And that’s why dreams are just dreams.