With my dreams and desires, I sometimes feel like this mother who has given birth to a child. She is beautiful, perfect, and all that I have imagined. She has some flaws, but it doesn’t matter — she is my child. She is a part of me, and as such I’ll cherish her forever. I hold my child for just a moment — in that brief moment, I am happy beyond what I can imagine, for the glimpse of my child — but then I watch her struggle to take in breath. She can’t breathe the air in this world outside of my body. It’s killing her. She keeps trying to breathe in, and she makes a horrendous gurgling, choking sound.

I call for help, but no one really comes. Some people stop in passing, but they don’t reach out to do much of anything. Most of them just tell me — tell me, as I’m watching this child of mine die in my arms, that “everything will be ok” and “you’re always so positive. Just stay positive, I’m sure things will be ok”.

But this baby in my arms is dying, and helplessly I watch the life choke out of her, an innocent being that just wanted to be. I watch the life drain from her body. I watch her body start to disintegrate, into sand and smoke and wisps. She has died, and with her, so has a part of me.

She is not the first child I have lost. She will not be the last.

I want to become a writer and game designer because I want to create worlds that let me escape this one. The sadnesses, pains, and inequities. The injustices that won’t be undone. But I want my worlds to be more than worlds on paper. I want them to be more than a movie on the screen. I want them to be living, breathing worlds that other people can drown themselves in too. Where people can find the dream-children they, too, felt were lost forever.

That is why I write. That is why I create. I want there to be a world where my dreams, my hopes, and my happinesses — my children — can finally be.