Soul Writers

When we're young, we have dreams as big as the world. We don't know limits yet. We haven't learned to measure possibility against probability. We just... want. With our whole chests. With the kind of certainty that only exists before someone tells you no. We wanted to fly. To be heroes. To change something. To matter. And the world was wide open or so we thought. Then, when we're older, we're told to face reality. As if our dreams and reality are in direct conflict. As if wanting too much is a disease. As if hoping is something you're supposed to outgrow, like baby teeth or bedtime stories. Be realistic, they say. But what they mean is: settle. What they mean is: the world doesn't owe you anything, so stop acting like it does. What they mean is: your dreams were never the point surviving was. And so we shrink. We become smaller, quieter, more acceptable. We trade the vastness of our childhood skies for the four walls of a life that fits. But somewhere in the back of a closet, in the bottom of a drawer, in the quiet space behind our ribs the dream is still there. Folded. Dusty. But breathing. And then someone asks: "What do you want your life to look like?" And the question lands like a stone in still water. Because you used to know. You used to see it ... vivid, possible, yours. But now? Now you open your mouth to answer and nothing comes out. Not because you don't want anything. But because you've been told for so long that wanting is dangerous, that wanting is foolish, that wanting is for children and the delusional that you've forgotten how to want at all. So you sit there. Silent. Staring at the person who asked, staring at the version of yourself that still remembers, staring at the space between who you are and who you thought you'd be. And you think: What do I want? I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be free. I wanted to love and be loved in a way that didn't feel like negotiation. I wanted to matter, not to the world, but to myself. Is that still allowed? Or did I trade that away somewhere along the way, in exchange for getting by, for being realistic, for surviving a world that never promised me anything but struggle? The question hangs there. And maybe — maybe — the most honest answer is: I don't know anymore. I don't know what I want. I don't know if I'm allowed to want. I don't know if the person I am now is the person I became or the person I settled for. And that silence that long, aching silence after the question is the truest thing you've said in years. Because sometimes the deepest answer isn't words. It's the quiet. It's the not knowing. It's the slow, painful realization that somewhere between being young and being here, you lost the thread. And now, when someone asks you to weave it back you don't even remember what the pattern looked like. So you just... sit. With the question. With the silence. With the ghost of a dream that still hasn't decided whether to die or fight. --- And when they finally look away when they stop waiting for an answer you feel something small and cold settle in your chest. Not sadness. Just... truth. The truth that some questions don't have answers. The truth that some dreams don't come back. The truth that you are here alive, breathing, surviving but somehow, somewhere, the you who knew what they wanted... is gone. And you don't know if you're supposed to mourn them, or become them again. So you just sit. Quiet. Still. Waiting for a dream you're not sure you're allowed to have anymore. --- What do you want your life to look like? ...I don't know. But I wish — God, I wish — that the answer came as easily as it did before the world taught me to stop asking. Before I learned that wanting is dangerous. Before I became someone who survives instead of someone who lives. I don't know what I want. But I know what I lost. And maybe — maybe — that's the same thing. ... Arthur - @LostBoy81