to all my nevers

This morning I was watching a TikTok and an older woman with grey hair graced my FYP. She was doing an OOTD and the audio was about how to really live life and what matters.

It dawned on me that I will likely never see a day where my hair starts to grey. I’ll likely never have the privilege of growing old and frail. I’ll likely never know what it feels like to tell my tales to my nieces. I may not even get the privilege of watching my nieces grow into their full selves. I’ll never have my own children. I’ll never be able to read them my favorite stories about Madeline and anything by Remy Charlip. I’ll likely never outlive my cats. I’ll never be able to hold them until they’re scraggly with gravelly meows. All the things that I will never have is something I rarely can grasp as there is so much that I haven’t been able to do. I have no idea what I will get to experience. I have no idea how life will go. In that same vein, I have no idea how death will go either.

I don’t know if anything I am saying feels profound in the face of the grief I am experiencing over all these little things. Well, they are not little, but you know what I mean. All these things - my ”nevers” - I hold them constantly. Sometimes I dream about what achieving these “nevers” would look like. I spend hours daydreaming of the life I could be living had I only realized things sooner or fought harder to achieve them. These things would be harder for me to achieve now and I’ve almost written them off all together at this point. I often wish I had a someday.

Someday — what a beautiful thought. A naïve one, but a beautiful one nonetheless.