What happens to the childhood dreams we outgrow?
When I was young, I was always curious about where things go when they disappear. Lost socks in the laundry, balloons slipping from a child's grasp, the sun dipping below the horizon—do they vanish entirely, or do they simply find a new place to exist? As a child, I imagined some hidden dimension where all the lost things gathered together. Lately, I’ve been asking the same question, but about something far less tangible: childhood dreams.
When I was eight years old, I wanted to be an actress. It wasn’t the passing ideation of a girl who might also want to be a princess or an astronaut. It was a certainty, an electric current in my chest that set my heart racing.
That conviction was born the night I saw the 2008 production of Les Misérables on Broadway. The musical was magic, but the moment that rewrote my future was when Alexis Kalehoff stepped onto the stage as Young Cosette. She was eight. I was eight. And for the first time, I saw my future with absolute clarity: I wanted to be that girl, standing on that stage, singing under those bright lights.
The next day, I joined my town’s local theater program, and as the years went on, I looked to star on bigger and bigger stages. By twelve, I had signed with my first agent and manager, turning a childhood dream into a succinct plan. I traded after-school sports and weekend playdates for rehearsals, acting coaches, and voice lessons. Summer camp for summer acting intensives. My world became a relentless cycle of auditions—commercials, short films, Broadway productions. I even auditioned for Game of Thrones once, a fun fact I like to casually drop into first-date conversations.
I booked some roles, but more often than not, I sat under fluorescent lights while casting directors picked at their lunches and delivered polite rejections:
“We love your energy, but we’re going in a different direction.”
“You were amazing, but we’re looking for someone taller!”
“Come back next time.”
At first, I took it in stride. Rejection is part of the process, my agent told me. Every no gets you closer to a yes. But over time, those no’s grew heavier, especially for a girl already carrying a rolodex of pre-teen insecurities. It wasn’t just the rejection that hurt—it was the vulnerability. Stepping into a sterile audition room, heart pounding, voice unsteady, pouring my soul into a performance, only to be met with murmurs, and a polite, “Thank you.” It chipped away at me.
At sixteen, I landed an audition for a brand-new Disney Channel TV show. This was it. The dream all teen-actors had. I prepared for weeks with my acting coach, perfecting every line. I got a callback.
My hopes soared until, like a script I knew by heart, I received another “no.” Later, I found out the role went to Sabrina Carpenter. Yes, that Sabrina Carpenter. Every so often, I catch myself thinking about it—watching her on SNL or performing at the Grammys—like some cosmic joke. A Sliding Doors moment where, in another universe, I’m the one singing onstage, and she’s the one writing this personal essay.
That night, I curled up on my parents’ bathroom floor, sobbing through the words: I can’t do this anymore. I was drained from the endless cycle, but more than anything, I just wanted to be normal. To go to high school parties without keeping an eye on the clock. To trade rehearsals for Friday nights drinking raspberry Svedka in someone’s childhood basement.
Acting wasn’t just exhausting—it was isolating. While my best friends were captains of the volleyball team or editors of the yearbook, my world revolved around a dream no one else seemed to understand. At school, I felt like a visitor, slipping in and out of hallways where I never quite belonged. And the truth was, being a theater kid wasn’t exactly cool. I wanted to shed the dorky reputation that clung to me, to step into something bigger than the role I’d been playing. I didn’t want college to feel like an encore of high school.
So I quit. I let my childhood dream slip through my fingers like a helium balloon, watching it float higher and higher until it was just a speck in the sky. I didn’t chase it. I let it go. To the place of missing things.
For a while, I couldn’t bear to look back. Passing a theater made my stomach drop. When watching a movie, I’d study the actors’ faces, wondering if we had once stood in the same audition rooms, chasing the same dream. Award shows were (and still are) the worst. I’d sink into my couch, eating Chinese takeout, as actors my age stepped onto glittering stages, their names echoing in rooms I once imagined myself in. I wanted to be part of that world—but I wasn’t. So I tried to forget, convincing myself that moving on meant leaving that version of me behind.
But dreams don’t just disappear. They don’t vanish like lost socks or balloons drifting into the ether. They find new places to exist.
The funny thing about giving up on a dream is that your mind refuses to let go of the version of you who didn’t quit. Counterfactual thinking—the mental tendency of imagining “what could have been”—keeps those ghosts alive. It’s why former athletes replay their final missed shot, why actors fixate on the audition that could have been their big break, why we revisit the moments that felt like turning points. These what ifs are sticky; they hold on even as we try to move forward.
I think about this concept every time I watch La La Land. In the final scene, Mia sees an alternate version of her life play out—a dreamlike montage of the path she didn’t take. It’s beautiful, heartbreaking, and ultimately, not real. She made a different choice. But as the scene fades, she smiles. There’s peace in knowing that the version of herself who once dreamed still exists, even if she’s no longer with her.
At 25, nearly a decade removed from that chapter of my life, I understand Mia. Stepping into a Broadway theater now, the sharp sting of loss has softened into something gentler: recognition. As the curtain rises, I see a version of myself up on stage, a life I might have lived. And while I’m no longer the one under the lights, the thrill of performing and my love for the craft hasn’t vanished. It’s simply transformed. Now, I feel a quiet kinship with the actors on stage, a deep-rooted connection to a world that once felt like home. More than ever, I’m drawn to Broadway, not just as a spectator, but as a way to honor the young girl who once stood in the wings, waiting for her cue.
I’ve come to realize that dreams don’t disappear—they evolve. Acting taught me to read between the lines, to embolden a scene, and to inhabit a world beyond my own. Writing isn’t so different. I may not be performing, but I’m still telling stories. The stage may have dimmed, but the spark that first lit inside me at eight years old is still there, flickering across a page.
Maybe that’s where childhood dreams go—not into the past, but forward with us, shapeshifting in ways we don’t always recognize. They thread through our lives, quietly guiding us toward what still makes us feel alive. And maybe, they were never lost to begin with.