I always have been and always will be a dreamer. Many times, you will catch me staring off into space or looking vacant, but that is only because I am lost in my own head again. Reality is much too bland for my liking sometimes, so I escape for a while and tend to daydream about everything from the first time I held my puppy in my hands to what the future might hold for me. Now, you can tell me that my dreams are too big, but I can argue against that and say that your mind is too small. To suggest that I can never achieve my goals because I come from a small city that is only known for being one of five hyphenated cities in America is insulting, but I’ll prove you wrong.

Tell me that I cannot do it and I will use that as my fuel to push forward and show you how you're wrong. Tell me that I am small, not in size, but in significance and that I was meant for a mundane life and I will prove you wrong. Tell me that all the odds are stacked against me and that I do not have the slightest chance of making it. Tell me that I am delusional and naïve enough to actually believe in achieving my dreams and I will prove you wrong.

I do have every intention of leaving my mark on this world one way or another. I intend to leave a ripple of my well-being behind, so I will be remembered even after my death, so people can quote me in the middle of conversations and say I changed their lives. My dreams may seem too big for me or too out of reach, but I have adapted a certain kind of love for my dreams, a certain kind of attachment. I love my dreams; I will protect my dreams time and time again after you repeatedly tell me to let them go. I will hold my dreams, tight and close, and I will not allow anyone to stop me from chasing them. I will go the distance and a half to achieve them and not pay any mind to the bystanders who tell me to stop in my tracks.

I will not stop in my tracks. I will keep going, keep moving and trek forward until I prove you wrong. I will keep moving forward for however long it may be until I have achieved all that I have ever wanted to achieve. Time is precious and never-ending. At the end of my life, when my time is up, I can only hope I got my dollar's worth and that I have done all that I wanted to do.

“You think it’s going to be so easy,” they say. No, I don’t. I expect my journey to be long and daunting, difficult and frustrating, and I may even consider quitting a few times before I remember you telling me how I could not make it. I’ll remember you laughing when I told you what I dreamed of becoming and I’ll remember when you told me it was impossible and I will keep moving forward. I will remember each and every time I bathed in self-doubt all because you led me there and I will keep moving forward because I refuse to ever feel that way again.

I wouldn’t want it to be easy, anyway. I want to have a story to tell at the end of it all, and I want to be able to tell people how hard I struggled and what I had to overcome in order to get to the place I got to. You can try and shame me for dreaming bigger, but it will never faze me because I am a dreamer who will never give up on her dreams.