Young Starsy could not sleep.
The silver rays of the full moon’s pearly light shined through the open window of the kitchen onto the table on which he rested his head. His watch buzzed lightly, announcing the coming of midnight, yet he couldn’t sleep. He has wished the others goodnight earlier, then went to bed. But for all his twisting and turning, for all his attempts to clear his mind and shut his eyes, he just could not do it. He was anxious.
They talked in class that day about what they wanted to become when they were older. Though he did not participate, he kept thinking about it. He was smart, but he found that almost always dragged him down a spiral of overthinking, which, more often than not, led him to stress. What would I be when I grow up, he thought. No, what am I actually good at? Am I even good at anything? Will I ever make anything of myself? These thoughts swirled through his young mind like a vortex of shapeless dark figures of fear and uncertainty. He did not know what to do. He did not even know what to think. He found that most days letting these intense emotional episodes run their course would be the best way. After all, he can not do anything about them. But he found out that this time was the exception, as he lay his head on the table, trying to process what was going on.
He heard the sound of something being put on the table in front of him. He lifted his head and looked up. Harun, his older brother, was awake and has handed him a steaming cup of what he couldn’t quite discern under the faint light of the moon. He smiled at him. “It’s one of those nights, huh?” he asked, not quite expecting an answer. “Here, drink this. Hot ginger milk. Should calm you down.” He pointed at the cup he gave Star as he poured a cup of tea for himself. How he got here, and how he managed to prepare these drinks without Star noticing, was something the young man wasn’t quite sure of.
“How did you know I was here?” Asked Star. “Psychic power!” answered Harun, with an expression of amazement plastered across his face. He then chuckled. “I’m sorry. Never mind that. I woke up because I needed to go to the bathroom and I heard you brooding all the way from there. Now tell me, what is keeping you awake at this late hour?” He took a chair and ever so gently moved it into place. He sat facing the young man, seemingly better now that he took a few sips of his drink. “I was thinking about something and I couldn’t sleep. usually these thoughts don’t stick around, but today is different. What about you? Why aren't you going back to sleep?”
“A good sleeping schedule and a stress-free life, my little friend,” he answered. “Though those are my own to deal with. Do you feel better now?” he asked the young man, and surely enough, Star’s anxiousness was beginning to fade with every other sip of the drink his brother gave him. “Yes, I am. Thanks,” he replied. “Good. Do you feel like telling me what is keeping you up? I can’t help you without details.” And he would be right, Star figured, but it didn’t make confessing it any easier. “Do you promise not to make fun of me?” he asked nervously. “I have no reason to,” answered Harun. “Alright then,” Star took a deep breath. “We were talking in class about what we wanted to be when we grow up. Everybody knew what they wanted to be except me. I couldn’t answer because I kept thinking about it. And I can’t sleep now because of it.”
Harun, upon hearing this, wore a genuine smile on his face. He put his drink down, moved his chair closer to Star’s, raised his hand, and lovingly patted Star’s head. He then stopped.
“Do you wish to know what I have been told about this?” Harun asked. Star didn’t quite know what he meant in specific, but he nodded anyway. “Fate is a strange thing. You think you know what you want to do, or where you are headed, but it sometimes throws an unexpected element into the mix that may very well change your whole life. Everything. And then you’ll have to plan all over again how to work around it, or with it, or against it. Fate is not a creek - small and limited - nor is it a sea - vast and aimless - but it is a river. It runs in a single direction, sure, but it goes to many places, to lakes and swamps and seas waterfalls. It is ever moving forward, but it is also infinite in its possibilities.” Star was listening silently. He didn’t know how to reply, but these words connected with him, somehow. Like he knew they made some amount of sense, in a way he could not articulate in his mind. He kept listening.
“But for someone like you, someone who has, for all intents and purposes, just started their life, to worry about something like this at an early age? You are doing yourself a disservice. You have your whole life ahead of you. A whole life of experiences and trials and love and happiness and everything else in between. It is not fair for you to judge yourself based on where you are now.” And he put his hands on Star’s shoulders. “I promise you, things will get better. You may feel lost now, as we all have been before, but you will find something you are great at, and you will do it, and hopefully love doing it for the rest of your life. I promise you, things will get better if you just believe in yourself. Believe in yourself, for your sake, and for mine. Because I also believe in you. I always have.”
Star was listening the whole way. He wanted to believe. He wanted to trust Harun, but all he could manage was a sigh as he looked down, uncertainty written across his face. Seeing this, his older brother held him closer in his arms. “I know it is hard to wait, I know how hard it is to ward off the darkness when the night feels so long, I know that you may have the whole world in your hands and still feel like peace of mind is out of your grasp, and I know, first hand, that Sleep seldom helps if it's your soul that's tired, but you must trust yourself enough to succeed. You must believe in your own strength to overcome what life has in store for you. I know you must, because I know you can.” He hugged him tighter. “You are my little brother, and your smile means the world to me.”
Star did not know what his brother was talking about, but he felt his stress and fear fade away. He took a deep breath, shuddered, and broke himself free from Harun. Harun smiled. “Do you feel better now?” he asked. “Yes,” Star answered. “Thanks. I don’t know what you did, but I feel the feelings I’ve been holding on to are gone.” He yawned. “That’s ginger milk for ya. Fixes your nerves right up,” he said enthusiastically. “Okay then, I think we spent enough time chatting. You should probably go back to bed. Tomorrow’s a school day, after all.” Which was true, Star remembered, as Harun was busy fixing the chairs and putting the cups in the sink. “I’ll deal with this when I wake up. You go on ahead. Goodnight,” said Harun. “Goodnight to you, too,” answered Star, already on his way out.
