I recently found my childhood best friend on Facebook. We reconnected and reminisced for weeks, we talked endlessly about everything and anything since we last saw each other. She told me she was married and serving in a different state. She shared photos of old mementos and of her new life. And just like that it was as if the gap bridged throughout the years disappeared. Because that’s what happens when you reconnect with someone you loved so much, it all comes back, the love too.

We spoke of the innocence of those times, and of the happiness in the endless play dates. Back when the simpler times were bliss. Back when the future seemed promising, and pure, and rose colored. We remembered the endless conversations about our dreams and ambitions, and the more we shared, the more my heart in lament grew.

And in the recollection of dear memories she shared and old photograph. Me and her in my backyard, I’m standing on a milk crate and she is on a chair. We are wearing her older sister’s dresses, swimming in the fabric, with a string of pearls around our necks, and oversized heels that did not belong to us. And we are holding literature up, beaming. We are caught mid laugh and for a fraction of a second, in a picture, the best of us was captured. And a pang of pain shakes my heart because as hard as I try I can no longer recognize the girl staring back at me.

So I peer into the image. Examining it. Hoping that the more I zoomed in the more I'd recognize who she was. That I’d see a fragment of me in her. But I wasn’t that little girl anymore. And even though I recognized the location and the context of the picture, it all seemed unsettling and foreign. Somewhere along the way I’d lost that version of myself. And the worst part was, not knowing if I was worth finding.

For the past 7 years I’d been in survival mode for so long that all I knew was instinct. I’d long ago forgotten how to live a life where dreams inspired and hope gave purpose. I’d been in autopilot for so long I’d forgotten to ask if this was even the destination I had intended. If it was at all where I wanted to end up.

When I got sick, the best I could do to not fuel the depression was simply not to think. Not plan. Just be present, because I didn’t know if there was a future to be lived. Because any hesitation on my part would have been catastrophic to my recovery. So I just didn’t. Every dream and every wish that little girl in the picture held took a backseat to the harsh realities of the world. To sickness, and loss, and life.

There was no point in planning ahead, in building anything, when everyone is telling you your times run out. So I turned my heart into autopilot. Just enough to coast me through so I could just float above the fray instead.

But that only works for so long. All planes must land. Eventually you’ll have to take hold of the wheel, you’ll have to steer it to safety. But it’d been so long, I’d forgotten protocol. I never planned on coming out the other end. I never planned I’d have tomorrows. And here it was my future, today, and I had no clue what to do with it.

The dreams and ambitions I once held as a child simply don’t fit into my current circumstances anymore. They are outdated. Most people gradually conform their ambitions to their current capabilities. I don’t even know what mines are.

This past year had been so brutal it was too loud to even hear what my heart was screaming. But I felt it as I peered into that photo. The little girl in the picture, the little girl I once was, wanted nothing else but to feel joy. She didn’t care about the statistics, if the dress fit, or if the shoes were too big, she just wanted to throw her head back and laugh. And dream. And hope. And live.

21 years later, for the first time in a long time, I too shared her wish.