Have you ever just looked up at the stars and imagined what might be up there?
My sister thinks I'm crazy, for lying out on the roof examining constellations. It's kind of a hobby of mine. I probably know more of the tiny star formations than any normal nearly-thirteen-year-old boy should know.
Orion. Leo. Pegasus. Aquarius. Pisces. Ursa minor. Ursa Major. That one's my favorite.
It's amazing that every single one of these little white lights in the sky is actually millions of miles away, and incandescent. When I was a kid my mom used to love to tell me "Reach for the moon, little Dipper." Sometimes, the cruel realities of the world don't let you. They place you in a classroom next to a kid who still picks his nose and expect you to be able to learn. Why reach for the moon when an A plus is so much closer, and so much more realistic? I wanted to be an astronaut so amply as a kid and I used to be so proud of my birthmark.
I used to be.
Now everyone just thinks it's peculiar. I started hiding it because I didn't want to be "the weird kid with the birthmark" in middle school. And now it feels like Ursa Major is mocking me whenever I look at the sky lately. My sister says I'm going nutty, but am I? I used to be able to stare up at the sky for hours, concentrating on each miniscule piece of the giant puzzle that is the night sky. Now I can't look for more than ten minutes without feeling like I shouldn't be allowed.
The birthmark on my forehead is the very essence of my existence, or so Mabel claims. It's what makes me who I am. Often I wonder who I would be without it. Even hiding it, I know subconsciously that it's there. It doesn't go away. It's ridiculous that something so small could be so overpowering.
Difference is not accepted amongst early teens and tweens. They automatically categorize you as a "freak" if you have something different about you from what they perceive as normal. What even is a middle-school definition of normal anyways?
Maybe it's not such a terrible thing to be proud of after all.