You Are Not Behind

I want to say something plainly, because I think you need to hear it from outside your own head: you are not behind.

There is no schedule. There was never a schedule. Somebody made one up, decades ago, about when a life is supposed to have certain things in it, and enough people repeated it that it started to feel like a law.

I know how it works in practice. You measure yourself against a version of yourself who made different choices and got there faster, and she always wins, because she isn't real. She's a spreadsheet. She doesn't have your bad weeks or your good reasons.

So here is what I'd say if we were sitting on the porch with coffee going cold between us. Nothing that is meant for you expires. There is no penalty for arriving late. And the year you spent surviving instead of building wasn't wasted — it was the year you stayed in the room.

Put down the scorecard. There's nothing on it that's about you.

— Ané