Word Count: 1914

Reading Time: 6-7 mins.

I've always been a dreamer, or so I'm told. 

I'd say ditzy, or maybe endearingly clueless at best, though.
When I was younger I used to stumble around parks and playgrounds, tripping over anything and everything, just staring at the sky; chasing planes and birds and clouds, and when night fell, the stars.

I almost died of excitement when I got my first "real" telescope.
My brother tells me that I legitimately fell out of my chair and onto the floor the second I tore open the package, and that the family had been contemplating bringing me to the hospital for a moment before I jumped back up, grabbed the telescope, and half-carried, half-dragged it up the stairs to my room, the package clunk-clunk-clunking against the steps as I couldn't quite manage to lift it off them as I climbed. 
From that day forth, I think that I only left my 'star-cave' for food, water, and education.

The second I got home after school every day, I'd drop my things and dash up the stairs, waiting only a second at the top to greet the three other members of my family. I'd take my things out through my window and up to the flat section of the roof (the 'Observation Platform'), where I would sit under the sun and do my homework as fast as humanly possible; I did everything to maximize the time I had to elaborate on my star charts. When it rained out, I'd open my Super-Large umbrella, sit on top of a plastic garbage bag, and continue my work as usual, pausing only to make sure that the paper wasn't getting too wet in the downpour.

After the lights went out every night, I slept for a few hours before waking to the sound of my alarm. At midnight or so, I snuck out to the roof and drew out a fresh sheet of paper to illustrate the vastness of the stars above me. I often fell asleep there, surrounded by charts and pencils and instruments weighted down by little rocks that I had collected the day before from the playground at school. The next morning, I'd wake with the rising sun, climb back into my room, and start to label things more clearly with a special pen that I used solely for this purpose; I inked the sketches and diagrams that I'd made the night before and coloured them with my pencils or watercolour paints. 

Over time, the routine became as natural as breathing, and I absolutely loved it. I felt in my element up there, drawing stretches of sky on my charts; it was like finding another slice of Seokjin up there in the skies every night and bringing it down to fill myself with content, with happiness.

Staying up at night and documenting those beautiful celestial bodies was my greatest joy, arguably my single joy, in life. I'd go to school every morning with bags under my eyes because of it, but I did wake up on time (most of the time) in the mornings, and that was enough for my parents.
They saw and recognized how much those stars meant to me, so they didn't say anything when I set up a workstation, complete with emergency space blanket, umbrella, and mini-tent, on top of their house. They didn't say anything when I covered my room with sheets upon sheets of huge paper, every one covered with colourful constellation diagrams and depictions of galaxies far away and size comparisons of various stars and planets with the earth.

I was and still am infinitely thankful that my family understood that I wanted and needed to do those things, because it was my passion, my dream. The one and only meaningful thing I wanted to do with my life.

It's a talent, a gift, people say, to be able to peer up at the stars so often and for so long, because it takes patience to watch things so unchanging and stoic. But I think that the opposite is true, that it's so easy for me to train my eyes on the sky simply because those stars are really the only ones that will be patient enough with me. They're eternal and steady and nobly silent, always willing to listen when I talk to them in my head trying to sort out my problems and little worries. No person, no human has ever been able to do that for me, to sit still for long enough and retain interest for long enough for me to spill my thoughts entirely. Throughout my life, I've usually talked a lot more than 'normal' for someone my age, or for anyone any age for that matter, and no one has ever been even a fraction as patient as those unmoving, brilliant points of light up there.

Until she came into my life. She was the first person that could sit down and have a serious talk with me, could stand to listen, really listen, to what I had to say. I suppose she was better than the stars, in a way; she responded to me and gave her own opinions from time to time in a way that they never could. 

She drew me in and I loved that, too. The feeling of being wanted, of being taken seriously and almost looked up to, even, was new and exciting and heady. We were a happy couple for a time, though there was always something inexplicable hanging in the background, something constantly lurking in the back of my mind and waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

She was alarmed to see me reaching up to the skies every minute of every day, balancing on top of a pile of precariously stacked hopes and fantasies, and in response she pulled me down to safety on solid ground. 

She said it was for my own good, as though she knew better than I what was good or bad for me. 

I didn't have the heart to tell her, was afraid of the painfully disappointed look I knew she'd give me if I told her, that I absolutely hated it. That I hated her nagging and I hated her attempts to pull me away from my world, the only world in which I felt that I fit in and belonged. I wanted to be up there on the rooftop all the time, I thought about it during the day and anticipated returning home every evening so that I could sleep under the comforting glimmer of the stars again.

If it was a good day, I'd take her up there with me and have her help, holding down the sheets and things as I drew, helping me to describe in detail the many hues of the sparkling lights. But she grew tired in the end every time, and she would never agree to stay with me overnight on the rooftop. She would decline all my offers to just watch the heavens be illuminated ever so faintly by the moon and the stars, watch the clouds pass over and perhaps watch the little fireflies buzz by if it was the right time of year.

She confronted me on my 20th birthday. She told me I was spending too much time staring up at the skies, chasing the stars, and that, because of it, I barely had any idea what was going on around me, what was going on in real life. That, because of it, I alone amongst all the many members of the human race was outside of reality, in my own little bubble of night sky and stars and outer space. 

If I think hard enough, I can let myself realise that I've always been like that, looking so far into the future that the present catches me off-guard all the time.

In our last conversation, she told me that she had been feeling for quite a while now that I gave my work and hobby higher priority than I gave her, and that she felt used, an object. She said that, sometimes, she forgot that she was a person of her own, with her own things to think about, because she spent so much time listening to me talk to her about astronomy and planets and the wonders of the universe. 

She had taken that as a message, as proof that I didn't care about her as much I did some "stupid twinkly balls of gas."
And I was simply too oblivious to notice that until she said it out loud, too separated from everything to realise what pain she was in because of me. 

The boy who longed for the stars and the girl who reached for his ankles, perpetually trying to bring him back down to the safety of normalcy.
I guess we were too different, she and I, and so we fell apart. 

Now I look more than ever to the heavens for answers, for guidance, because it's all I can do and all I've ever known. 

Her departure hit me harder than the beauty of the gold-silvery specks of light that I admired so much, wounded me deeper than anything ever had before. I felt purely empty inside after she'd told me I was too close to them, after she'd warned me to keep myself balanced and grounded before I floated away for good.
But part of me has always truly loved being weightless, drifting in a vast ocean of dark sky and full moon, of bright shapes and graceful movement. I couldn't let that go.

I still wear the watch she bought for me for our first dating anniversary, the one with the shooting stars and the precious stones all rotating around the sun and the true-to-life annual cycles of the six visible planets; Saturn and Jupiter have yet decades to complete even one full circuit of the timepiece. I loved it from the moment I set eyes on it, and it is one of my most prized posessions, second only to my high-tech, state-of-the-art observation equipment. 

It was honestly way too expensive for something bought like that, as a celebration of a relationship that was probably going to go downhill and crash and burn anyway — the signs of an imminent break-up were evident even then — but she had thought it was nice, because it was another "glue factor" in our already rocky relationship. Something symbolizing the fragile, precious connection between us, something that might keep us together through the rougher patches of turbulence we had from time to time. Something that we might go back to after the oncoming storm had passed to help us remember happier days.

When she came into the picture and dragged me back to the earth from my suspension in the world of the spheres, I never lost that feeling of connection I had with them. I always wanted to go back to them. 

But now that I have, something is missing.

I'm stationed on the roof of my own house, now, it's been years since I moved out of my parents', but the setup is still the same after all these years. 

Only now there is a cold, empty space next to me in the space blanket, instead of a person with whom I can laugh and share thoughts and stories and wonder about all the little things the universe has to offer us.

I really did love her.