Written for others who also didn’t get their lives back.

There was a time I felt unstoppable. Not in a loud way. Not in a superhero way. Just quietly certain.

Certain that if I worked hard enough, stayed kind enough, tried long enough, life would open. I’d travel. Build my business. Fall in love. Create something meaningful. Become more and more myself with every year that passed. I wasn’t chasing extraordinary. I just assumed possibility was infinite.

And then my world started to shrink. Slowly. So slowly I didn’t notice at first. A pain here. An injury there. A delay. A “just for now.”

Everything was temporary, I told myself. This isn’t who I am. This isn’t my life. This is just the middle bit before everything begins again. I lived for “after.” After the surgery. After the flare. After the treatment. After I get my strength back.

After. After. After

But after never came. It was just a new problem to solve. A new limitation to work around. A new piece of myself I had to negotiate with.

Seven years is a long time to wait for your real life to start. At some point, I had to admit something I didn’t want to say out loud: Maybe the old me isn’t waiting at the end of this. Maybe there is no rainbow version of me, fully restored.

Maybe this is it.

And that realisation didn’t feel freeing. It felt like grief. Because no one talks about the grief of losing a possible self.

When someone dies, people bring flowers. When a dream quietly expires, you’re told to “stay positive.” But there’s no ceremony for the person you thought you’d become. No acknowledgement that they mattered too. So the wound just sits there. Unhealed. Unseen. And then comes the worst part — the part we don’t admit:

If I can’t achieve what I planned…If I can’t build as much, travel as far, do as much as others…If my world is smaller…Am I smaller too?

In a society that ties worth to beauty, productivity, money, milestones — it’s easy to start feeling invisible. Replaceable. Behind. Like you somehow failed at being a person.

Even though none of this was your choice. We didn’t ask for our worlds to shrink. We didn’t choose bodies that break easily. We didn’t volunteer to trade possibility for survival. And yet, here we are.

Still here.

Not triumphant. Not inspirational. Just… here.

For a long time, I thought loving myself meant getting back to who I used to be. Fix the body. Fix the life. Then I’ll deserve kindness. But that day never arrived. So now the question has changed.

Not: How do I become her again? But: How do I love the version of me that stayed?

The girl who adapted. Who kept going. Who learned to live a smaller life without completely disappearing. Maybe loving her isn’t about pretending this is fine. Maybe it’s about telling the truth.

This hurts. This isn’t what I planned. I miss who I was. But still — I matter. We all do.

Not because we achieved. Not because we conquered. But because we exist. Because we feel deeply. Because we care. Because we try. Because we’re gentle with others even when life hasn’t been gentle with us.

Worth was never meant to be earned through milestones. Maybe it was always inherent. Maybe the person who survived deserves just as much love as the person who once dreamed. Maybe more.

I’m not writing this because hardship made me stronger or wiser. It didn’t. It just made me different. I’m writing this because I know there must be others sitting quietly in smaller lives, wondering if they still count. You do. Even like this. Especially like this.

You are not behind. You are not less. You are simply living a life that didn’t expand outward, but folded inward. And there is still something there. Something that is yours.

Even in the cage, the bird still sings.