Between Pages and People: 15 Years From Now

          

Fifteen years from now, I hope to be free. Not just successful, not just stable—but free.

I see a version of myself who has finally built a life she does not need to escape from. A woman who no longer carries the weight of unmet expectations, who has carved a space where her dreams are valid. Maybe I will be a poet, leaving pieces of my soul in ink, we never really know. But if I ever get myself together, if I learn to unchain myself from the cage of my brain, if I find the strength to heal rather than just survive—I would want to be a psychologist

Because if there’s one thing I know deeply, it’s pain. The kind that lingers, the kind that turns people into ghosts of themselves. I’ve spent years carrying wounds I didn’t have the time to tend to, but maybe, one day, I’ll be the one helping others stitch themselves back together. To listen, to understand, to be the person I once needed. A psychologist who doesn’t just diagnose, but sees, the way a poet sees, the way a broken soul recognizes another.

And I don’t just want to understand people, I want to write them. Stories that feel like home to those who have never had one, poems that bleed truth, books that remind someone, somewhere, that they are not alone. A published author, a poet whose words outlive her, whose ink becomes a testament to every battle fought, won, or lost.

Fifteen years is a long time, yet I know time alone does not heal, nor does it guarantee change. I will have to fight for the life I want, to break the cycles I swore to end. I hope by then, I have learned to love without fear, to let people in without building walls too high to climb.

And maybe, just maybe, by then, I will have found peace in knowing that I was never meant to be everything for everyone. Just something for myself.