Dear dream,
For a long time, I pretended you never existed.
It was easier that way.
If I did not speak about you,
if I did not think about you too often,
if I filled my days with other responsibilities and other ambitions…
perhaps the silence would slowly erase you.
But silence has never been strong enough to bury something that once felt alive.
You still visit me sometimes.
Not loudly.
Not in ways that disrupt my life.
Just small reminders.
A passing thought while walking home at night.
A quiet moment when the world slows down.
A sudden memory of the person I used to be when you were still possible.
Back then, you felt so real.
I carried you everywhere.
In the plans I made.
In the risks I was willing to take.
In the way I looked at the future as if it were a wide open door.
But life has its own rhythm.
Paths change.
Responsibilities appear.
Practical decisions begin to replace bold ones.
And slowly, without any dramatic ending, I set you aside.
I told myself it was temporary.
That one day I would return.
But years passed.
And the world became louder.
Work demanded attention.
Life demanded stability.
Time demanded patience.
Somewhere in the middle of all that noise, you became quiet.
Not gone.
Just quiet.
I used to believe that burying a dream meant failure.
That leaving something behind meant weakness.
But age has taught me something different.
Sometimes dreams are not buried because we lacked courage.
Sometimes they are buried because life asked us to become someone else first.
Someone stronger.
Someone wiser.
Someone capable of understanding the dream more deeply than before.
Maybe you were never meant to happen in the version of life I once imagined.
Maybe you were meant to transform.
To wait.
To change shape as I changed.
And perhaps that is why you still return from time to time.
Not to accuse me.
Not to remind me of regret.
But to gently ask a question.
Are you ready yet?
I do not know the answer.
But I know this much.
Even dreams that are buried leave something behind.
They leave traces of who we once hoped to become.
And sometimes those traces are enough to guide us back toward ourselves.
So if you are still somewhere beneath the surface of my life…
be patient.
I have not forgotten you.
I have only been learning who I must become before I can meet you again.
