Writers 
There is a version of me
waiting somewhere ahead
not untouched by sorrow,
not free from mistakes,
not immune to the nights
when everything feels too heavy.
But she knows something
I am still learning.
She knows that endings
are not always failures.
She knows that losing people
does not mean losing herself.
She knows that some doors
were never meant to open,
and some roads
only looked beautiful
because she had not yet walked them.
I imagine her sometimes.
She wakes without carrying
yesterday on her shoulders.
She drinks her coffee slowly.
She laughs without checking
if anyone approves.
She wears her dreams
like they belong to her.
She no longer apologizes
for taking up space.
She has learned
that being soft
does not mean being weak,
and being alone
does not mean being unwanted.
She remembers the girl
I am today
the one who cried quietly,
who doubted herself,
who stayed too long,
who started again
more times than anyone knew.
And I think
she would be proud.
Not because I became perfect,
but because I kept becoming.
Because even when life
gave me reasons to stop,
something inside me whispered,
“Not yet.”
So I will keep walking.
I will make mistakes.
I will change my mind.
I will outgrow places
I once begged to remain in.
I will lose things.
I will find things.
I will become a stranger
to some versions of myself.
And maybe that is the point.
Maybe life is not about
finally becoming
the person we imagined.
Maybe it is about
meeting ourselves
again and again
until one ordinary morning
we look in the mirror
and realize:
I have become
someone I would have once
prayed to meet.
