Even with all the ways I tried to reach it, I managed to grasp it for a second. I thought I finally had it, only to lose it again. I convinced myself that if I ignored the strings beneath me, they wouldn’t be able to drag me back down—but they did. Now, I see all the reasons I shouldn’t have made those wishes in the first place. I shouldn’t have ignored the strings below me. I should have cut them all off, every last one of them. Maybe, just maybe, the strings pulling me back down right now wouldn’t have been the ones I already knew—the petty strings I should have severed from the very beginning, long before I started floating higher, long before I reached out.