Ana Stratulat

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the girl I used to be.

Not because I miss her.

But because I wish, just for a moment, I could sit beside her.

I wouldn’t tell her everything.
I wouldn’t ruin the surprise.

I think I would just look at her for a while — at all the things she worries about, all the things she thinks will never change, all the dreams she keeps somewhere between maybe one day and probably never — and I would smile.

Because she has no idea.

She has no idea that one day she will wake up inside a life that once existed only in her imagination.

And the strangest part is that it won’t happen all at once.

There will be no morning when the universe knocks on her door and says, Here. This is the life you asked for.

It will happen quietly.

Piece by piece.

A person will walk into her life and somehow become home.
Strangers will become friends.
Some people she thought would stay forever will become memories.
Some doors will close so painfully that she will sit in front of them for far too long, wondering what she did wrong.

And then, years later, she will understand why they had to close.

She will build a tiny family of her own — not necessarily made only from blood, but from love, loyalty, late-night conversations, shared meals, stupid jokes, difficult days, forgiveness, and the beautiful decision to keep choosing one another.

Because growing up teaches you something nobody really explains when you are a child:

family is not always only where you were born.

Sometimes, family is what you find.

Sometimes, it is what you create.

Sometimes, it is the person sleeping next to you, the friend who knows when something is wrong before you say a word, the people who celebrate your happiness without competing with it.

Sometimes home has nothing to do with an address.

And maybe that is one of the most beautiful things I have learned.

This past year changed something in me.

Or maybe it didn’t change me at all.

Maybe it simply introduced me to the woman I was becoming while I was too busy surviving to notice her.

I look at myself differently now.

I used to think confidence meant walking into a room and knowing you were the prettiest, the smartest, the most interesting person there.

Now I think confidence is much quieter.

It is not needing to be.

It is knowing who you are when nobody is applauding.

It is looking in the mirror and no longer searching only for what needs fixing.

It is forgiving yourself for versions of you that were only trying to make it through.

It is saying no without writing an entire apology afterward.

It is leaving places where you have to become smaller to be loved.

It is allowing yourself to want more without feeling guilty for everything you already have.

And, perhaps most importantly, it is finally becoming someone you feel safe being alone with.

I am still learning that kind of love.

The love I have for myself.

Not the loud kind. Not the kind that needs to be announced every morning.

The quieter kind.

The kind that says, I will not abandon you anymore.

I will take care of your dreams.

I will protect your peace.

I will let you change.

I will let you outgrow people, places, ideas, and even old versions of yourself.

I will stop asking you to remain who you were just because other people became comfortable with her.

There are things in my life today that my younger self would consider impossible.

And I don’t mean impossible in the dramatic sense.

I mean those tiny, secret dreams we rarely tell anyone about because saying them aloud makes them feel too fragile.

To love and be loved deeply.

To have work that gives me something to build, something to become better at.

To create.

To have ideas and actually bring them into the world.

To make plans and watch them turn into memories.

To see places I once knew only from photographs.

To laugh until my stomach hurts with people I once hadn’t even met.

To come home and feel that there is someone there who is my person.

To have a life that feels like mine.

There is something almost heartbreaking about realizing you are living moments you once begged life to give you.

Because we are so quick to move the finish line.

We get the thing.

Then we want the next thing.

We reach the place we dreamed about, take a picture, and immediately start wondering where we should go next.

We survive something we thought would destroy us and barely stop to acknowledge that we survived it.

We become the person we once wanted to be and immediately begin criticizing everything she has not become yet.

I don’t want to live like that anymore.

I want to notice.

I want to notice my life while it is happening.

I want to remember that some ordinary Tuesday I complain about might contain three things I once prayed for.

I want to look around the table.

I want to remember the voices.

I want to take the picture.

I want to stay five minutes longer.

I want to say “I love you” while people can still hear it.

I want to celebrate the small victories instead of waiting for something enormous to give me permission to be proud.

Because this is it.

Life is not waiting somewhere in the future for us to finally arrive.

It is already happening.

In messy kitchens and long drives.
In deadlines and morning coffee.
In airports and supermarket aisles.
In plans that work and plans that completely fall apart.
In kisses before leaving the house.
In tired evenings.
In spontaneous decisions.
In photographs we don’t yet know will become precious.

Maybe the biggest realization of this year is that a beautiful life does not have to be a perfect one.

Mine certainly isn’t.

There are still things I don’t understand.

There are still dreams waiting for me.

There are still days when I doubt myself, days when I am tired, days when I wonder whether I am doing any of this correctly.

But underneath all of that, there is something I didn’t have before.

Trust.

Trust that I will figure it out.

Trust that losing something does not mean losing everything.

Trust that another version of me is waiting on the other side of every season I think I cannot survive.

And trust that life can surprise me in ways I could never have planned.

If I could speak to that little girl now, maybe I wouldn’t tell her, Everything is going to be okay.

Because some things won’t be.

Some things will hurt.

Some dreams will never happen.

Some people will leave.

Some chapters will end before she is ready.

Instead, I think I would tell her:

You are going to be okay.

There is a difference.

I would tell her that one day she will stop waiting for someone else to create a beautiful life for her.

She will start creating it herself.

And she will understand that dreams coming true don’t always feel like fireworks.

Sometimes they feel like peace.

Like waking up next to someone you love.

Like having people to call when something wonderful happens.

Like being tired after a day you once wished you could have.

Like looking around your own life and, for one quiet second, having nothing to ask from it.

Just gratitude.

I have spent so much of my life looking forward.

Lately, I’ve been trying to look around.

At the love.

At the work.

At the friendships.

At this small, beautiful family life somehow gave me.

At everything I created.

At everything I survived.

At everything still waiting to be lived.

And sometimes I catch myself thinking:

When did this become my life?

I don’t know exactly.

Somewhere between losing, finding, trying, failing, loving, leaving, choosing, creating, and beginning again, it happened.

The impossible became ordinary.

The dream became Tuesday.

And the little girl who once wondered what her life would look like grew up and started living it.

There are still a thousand things I want.

A thousand places I want to see.

A thousand versions of myself I haven’t met yet.

But tonight, I don’t want to ask life for anything.

Tonight, I just want to say:

thank you.

For what stayed.

For what left.

For what found me.

For what I found in myself.

For the people I chose, and the people who chose me back.

For the dreams that came true so quietly I almost forgot they used to be dreams.

And for this strange, imperfect, beautiful life — the one I once thought belonged only to other people.

The one that, somehow,

became mine.

— A.S.