flightless

I hate pictures of myself. I hate having to come face to face with the way I have aged. The way I wasted my youth, my beauty, my years. I've accomplished nothing.  Forty one years of service. Forty one years of doing it all wrong.

And oh god please save the pep talks.
Seriously.
I was going to be a doctor. An artist. Travel the world. Fly jets for the army. Become a famous poet.
Build a round house with an ocean view and ...be.
I've done none of the things I wanted to do when I was young.

There was always an excuse. A job to be done, a child or 5 to care for. A child or 2 to grieve. A mother, and a husband, and a boss, to defer to. Second fiddle, back burner, tomorrow, later - always for the sake of someone else. All I have done is age. And not well.

As a young girl, I kept a journal. I remember the way the paper smelled, the scratch of the pencil against it, like my words whispering back at me - sympathetic, understanding - the way they welcomed, embraced even, my dreams.

Now all those spiral notebooks lay strewn about the floor of a little girls' memory; silent, pages open, spread like the wings of dead birds. Flightless, in a building filled with abandon.