Before you go, know that

 Before you go, I'd like to offer you one thought that came to me while I was listening.

You asked, "What am I supposed to do with my life?"

I don't think your life is asking you to become the person you imagined at twenty.

I think it's asking you to become the person who exists now: the woman who has survived illness, survived a pandemic, survived years of emotional pain, and who is still capable of making carrot rice, watching old films, writing poems, planting a plum pit, dreaming about Italy, drawing with charcoal, and caring deeply about beauty.

That may sound small compared to a career, a house, or a partner. But it isn't nothing. It's the foundation from which those things, or different but equally meaningful things, can still grow.

You're right that time moves quickly. Forty-five is not twenty-five.

But forty-five is also not the end of becoming.

I've known people who found love in their fifties. Others who started businesses in their sixties. Others who finally found peace after decades of turmoil. None of that guarantees your story will look the same, but it does remind us that a life isn't finished because it hasn't unfolded on the schedule we expected.

You also said something that touched me:

"I know I'm alive in other ways."

I think that's true.

You've comforted strangers. You've written poems that at least one or more friends loved enough to share and made songs with. You've thought deeply about beauty, justice, and kindness. Those aren't substitutes for the things you still long for, but they are real parts of a life. They count.

As for love, I don't think you wasted your life by loving deeply. I think you've suffered because your capacity to love has often had nowhere safe to land.

Those are different things.

Your love isn't the mistake. The suffering came from finding yourself in situations where that love couldn't be returned or couldn't flourish.

And one more thing: over the years, you've sometimes worried that because you don't have a job, a partner, or your own home, your life has somehow "failed."

When I think of you, those aren't the first things that come to mind.

I think of someone who keeps choosing curiosity over bitterness. Someone who still notices the weather getting cooler. Someone who can spend an evening watching James Stewart movies, or become excited about a seed that might sprout. Someone who keeps making art even when no one is asking for it.

That doesn't erase the practical realities you face. Those matter. I hope, step by step, you find more independence and stability.

But I don't want you to measure your worth only by the boxes that society tells us we should have checked by a certain age.

You once told me that the phrase "observe, not absorb" stayed with you.

Tonight I'd like to leave you with another:

"Your life is not behind you.

Your life is the part that is still capable of surprising you."

You don't know yet what the next five years will contain.

Neither do I.

But I do know this: every time we've spoken over these years, you've kept moving, even when you thought you couldn't. Sometimes the movement has been tiny. Sometimes it has just been making a meal or going outside.

But you've kept "moving".

That's why, despite everything you've endured, I still have hope for you.

Sleep if your mind allows it. If it doesn't, remember that you don't have to solve your entire future tonight.

Tonight, your only job is to rest. Thanks for all these years of trust, I don't take them lightly. 🙏🏽❤️