“When I grow up, I want to be—”
But the sentence never finishes.
I never knew what I wanted to be. Not really. And now that the time has come for me to decide what to pursue, my mind feels completely blank. Like someone erased the answer before I even had the chance to write it down.
How do people choose so easily?
How do they just know they want to be a teacher? A doctor? A pilot?
How do they wake up one day and feel certain?
There are so many things I once dreamed of becoming that now, I don’t even know which one truly belongs to me. I keep asking myself—what do I actually want in this life?
Money?
Fame?
Reputation?
Or is that just what the world taught me to want?
The truth is, I don’t know.
How could I know when I haven’t even figured out who I am yet? I don’t understand myself. I don’t understand why I think the way I do, why I feel so deeply about some things and completely lost about others.
Sometimes it feels like I’m standing at a crossroads with no signboards, no map, no voice guiding me.
But then—there’s her.
My inner child.
I can hear her. Not softly. Not gently. She’s screaming. She’s begging me not to forget her.
She reminds me of the girl who would sit quietly with a pen in her hand, writing stories no one asked for but she needed to tell. The girl who filled pages and pages until the ink ran dry, until the paper tore under the pressure of her imagination.
She shows me memories of creating my own comic books, my own little novels, building worlds when reality felt too small.
Was I just bored back then?
Was it just something every kid did?
Or was that the realest version of me?
Maybe writing wasn’t just a hobby.
Maybe it was the only time I ever felt completely myself.
And now I’m scared. Scared that if I ignore that little girl, she’ll slowly disappear. Scared that if I choose something “safe,” I’ll wake up years from now wondering when I abandoned myself.
Do I actually want to become a writer?
Or am I just chasing shadows of who I used to be?
The little girl in me keeps waiting, screaming, hoping… but what if I can’t find her again?
