Ever since I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with the cosmos. As a child, the night sky wasn’t just a blanket of stars—it was a puzzle waiting to be solved, a storybook written in constellations and comets. I would stare up for hours, trying to grasp the infinite, wondering if someone out there, light-years away, was doing the same.

Back then, the universe felt like a secret that only the lucky or the determined could uncover. There was no internet to fuel my curiosity with instant answers, no YouTube videos to explain the life cycle of a star or the mind-bending concept of black holes. But I was relentless. I’d wait impatiently for the weekly children’s magazine, flipping straight to the “planets” section, eager to devour every word. That single column was a lifeline to the vastness I couldn’t yet touch.

I started collecting scraps of the universe—literally. Old newspaper clippings about space missions, blurry pictures of the moon landing, articles about upcoming eclipses—all of them carefully cut out and glued into scrapbooks. My scrapbooks became my treasure trove, my personal library of the cosmos, filled with facts, images, and my own doodles of planets and stars.

The school library was my next frontier. I’d borrow encyclopedias—those giant, heavy books that smelled of old paper—and dive into their pages, learning about nebulas, supernovas, and galaxies far beyond the Milky Way. I didn’t just want to know about space; I wanted to understand it. I wanted to be a part of it.

For the longest time, I dreamed of becoming an astronaut. I pictured myself in a space suit, floating weightlessly in a shuttle, staring at Earth from above. I even practiced holding my breath underwater for as long as I could, imagining I was in zero gravity. Of course, life had other plans, and that childhood dream never materialized. But the wonder never left me.

Even now, the cosmos calls to me. Every time I see a clear night sky, I feel that same awe I did as a child. I think about the vastness, the mysteries we’ve yet to uncover, the worlds we’ve yet to explore. Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine what it would feel like to leave Earth behind, to travel through the stars, to be part of something so much bigger than myself.

One day, I hope to take a journey into the cosmos—not as an astronaut, perhaps, but as a dreamer finally stepping into the dream. Whether it’s through a telescope on a mountain, a visit to a space observatory, or, dare I say, a future space tourism flight, I know I’ll get there. Until then, I’ll keep looking up, collecting pieces of the universe in my heart, and dreaming of the day when I can truly reach for the stars.