For as long as I can remember, one question has stayed with me:
When a person gives up on a dream, what does it sound like?
Later, I learned the answer.
Nothing.
Dreams make no sound when they leave.
No door closes. No one comes to tell you, From this day on, you are drifting farther and farther away from yourself.
What does remain is the occasional cry from somewhere deep within.
Sometimes, it is loud.
Sometimes, barely a whisper.
But most of the time, we are too busy living—too busy becoming the person others believe we are supposed to be—that eventually, we learn to pretend we cannot hear it.
I was never blessed with extraordinary beauty, nor was I born into wealth.
But over the years, life has not left me empty-handed.
I had talents that others considered worthwhile. I received a good education. I built a career in the corporate world, became a manager, and accumulated many years of professional experience in human resources.
For a long time, I used all of these things to tell myself:
You already have a good life. What more could you possibly want?
Until one day, I finally began peeling away, layer by layer, all the “realities” I had used to comfort myself.
And I discovered that what frightened me most was not the thought that I had nothing.
It was this
I had gained so much, yet I could no longer bring myself to face the girl inside me who once wrote poetry.
She had never disappeared.
I had simply left her somewhere far behind. And she had been waiting there for me for many, many years.
So I decided to take the first step.
So I decided to take the first step.
Not because I had suddenly found the courage to begin again.
But because I no longer wanted to live
a life that looked good from the outside,
while the person inside me grew quieter and quieter.
I want to go back and find her.
To find the eight-year-old girl who began writing stories and believed that a single blank sheet of paper could hold an entire world.
To find the girl who once wrote poetry. To find the person I once was.