Imagination is a wonderful thing, and everyone has a little bit of it.

Thinking,

dreaming, or creating: These are all things imagination takes an important role in. Still, when

imagination overcomes reason, most of the times the results aren’t the best. I’ve always had

an overactive imagination, and overthinking seems to be my brain’s favorite hobby. My

imagination, in the worst circumstances–those that make any rational thought stop working as

it should–only leads to made up worries and a proof that worries are no more than just that,

worries. An example of this happened just a few weeks ago, at the end of summer vacation.

My sister has two dogs: Lime and Orange. They’re both wonderful, and

fundamentally different. Lime is quiet and needy, but barks like no one when some child

passes by the window. Orange, on the other hand, is always excited: From running from one

place to another to begging for food at the dinner table, to opening the blinds for Lime to bark

at things. It’s like she never grew up from being a puppy. So, when my sister decided to

travel with her husband and left them at my home for a few weeks, Orange was disturbingly

quiet. She hid, never begged for food, and laid at the end of the closed blinds. I thought that

she was uncomfortable from the little sweater put on her, but after taking it off came the

realization that she might be sick: Deadly sick, my thoughts said. I remember calling my

sister–after she came back, of course–about it, and her dismissal of my worries. Lime also

seemed to worry, hanging around Orange as much as he could.

So when, one day, I hear him barking as loudly as possible. This had become a

normal part of my day, so nothing was done for a good few minutes, but the barking never

stopped. After finally deciding to go check on him and seeing everything was fine, I went

back up to my room and realized something: Orange was nowhere. Not on her new favorite

hiding spot, not near Lime, and definitely not eating. And that’s where my imagination

started to kick in. I looked around for her, and she was nowhere. Now with the fresh memory

of hearing that dogs hide when they’re close to dying, I started to panic. And Lime kept
barking at the door while I desperately asked him where his sister was, with some part of my

brain eventually understanding she had gone outside. It did escape me that all the doors were

closed.

I went outside, barefoot and in my stained pajamas, and started desperately looking

for her up and down the street. But she obviously didn’t want to be found, because she was

nowhere! Now with quickened steps, heavy breathing and a few stares from neighbors, my

brain had a useful thought through the heavy fog of panic: I should call my mother! She’s

obviously going to know where Orange is, right? Doing just that, after a few dials comes the

answer I was desperately hoping for: She was taken to the vet by my sister. Now with a weird

sense of disappointment and overwhelming relief, I go back to my house, greeted by loud

barking from someone that was trying to say that all along.

Ever since then, I try to think a little bit before panicking completely. Think

something rational, at least. Overthinking is still an issue, of course. My imagination hasn’t

magically stopped that, or that it has become easy to sometimes ignore it, but its influence on

me has diminished slightly. Orange wasn’t deadly sick at all, fortunately: Her tendency to eat

everything that she comes across simply backfired on her. She got sick from eating a simple

seed that ended up obstructing her throat, proving to myself, once again, that my worries are

just that: worries.

Reflection on Editing

Editing wasn’t incredibly hard. A few grammar and punctuation mistakes–and an

entire part in the wrong tense–but that’s fine. The worst part was shortening my essay. I have

a tendency to just never stop writing when I’m interested in doing so, and paragraphs with 15

lines just aren’t the best to read. Most of that information is not useless, unfortunately: They

help set the tone, give details to make people care a little bit more about what I’m writing,
and many other small, but meaningful to me, things. There still is a lot, but it’s definitely

what’s needed to make it just a little bit more meaningful without being excessive.