On a rough day, I can feel my heart collapse vein under valve beneath the surrounding rib cage as if it were trapped in a rapidly decompressing airplane cabin. I implode at the sound of internal doubt that hisses, “you will never,” to all of the things I hope for.
How could I never when there is still time? Time to fall in love, time to write a book, time to become the person I wake up every day wishing I already was. There is always time, and yet…you will never.
In reality I know that every very true ‘never,’ is in the past. Moments with those loved and lost that are locked in time. They are finite, and do not haunt me. This taunting, hypothetical hiss that slithers into my dreams is something else entirely, as if all of the things that haven’t even happened yet are over before they could begin.
You will never fall in love; it takes time, takes another person, they are all taken and you are out of time.
You will never write a book; real writers publish early and often are you’re far too late.
You will never be who you want to be, because you have already become someone else.
There is no anecdote to this defeatist voice, other than to mentally move forward into the future where never dissolves into now.
And yeah, I’m not the person I thought I would be by now, but maybe I’m better?
Maybe.
Maybe Never.

Luciana, 30