Dear diary,

I am slowly learning how to embrace the future. When I was 13, I’d walk around and tell anybody that would listen, “I’m going to die by the time I’m 40.”

I’m not entirely sure why 40 specifically. Maybe it was the perfect sweet spot in my head — not too old, and not too young. Enough life in me left to have had potential, but not spry enough to have claimed an unfulfilled life. I had it all figured out until then, I guess.

I’d have a beautiful home in Arizona with a prominent career in finance. I’d have a doting husband and warm balls of laughter for kids — flashes of sunshines and leaves falling in the yard intertwined with glimpses of candlelight dancing and rustling sheets. I had visions of a house full of love and joy, bottled up and labeled “desires for my future.”

Then suddenly… nothing.

As time has passed, I’ve tried finishing out the movie that I’ve deemed to be my life, and I realize that maybe I couldn’t see life past 40 because I knew that 22 would come rolling around, and I’d be lost enough on my own.

I hide in the past, retracing steps I’ve walked a million times over, hoping that if I squeeze my eyes tight enough and let myself be consumed by the pit in my stomach, my body can join my mind in the remnants of the past.