Would you ever wonder how much of you has materialized?

Like if what F. Scott Fitzgerald says is true and our lives are defined by opportunity,

even the ones we miss, then how much remains in the ether.

And I don't think it's about playing a game of what if.

You know, that would be endless. It would be self-defeating. No one's perfect. I don't even really think it's about making a right turn instead of a left.

Because as long as you're moving and moving with conviction, life ultimately

brings you where you need to be. But more, my concern is the steps never brought to pavement.

My ideas on the hatch, my opportunities, I either knowingly or unknowingly left on the shelf.

Because it didn't seem real enough. Like a Broadway play between my ears,

that as a spectator I knew would end.

After all, that's what stories do.

How much of ourselves have we cast aside

as simply the things we don't say out loud?

At first, it's infinite.

We've yet to be taught to limit because limits aren't things, their ideas, and ideas must be adopted.

That's why they say some of the life's best things were done by people too ignorant to know they were impossible, too naive of the notion that they couldn't say them out loud.

Then it's comparison, they have what I want.

But it was meant for them and not me. How delusional to think I could have it.

How crazy to think that life has yet to be written.

And I am an author.

My date is with normalcy in the box where I keep those things we don't say out loud, and then we look around and we see highlight reels. We see awards and vacations and smiles, but we don't stop to think maybe they're just like me. Maybe they're people who struggle and question themselves and doubt the road ahead. No, it must be the past diverged.

They took happiness and I took those things we don't say out loud and then there's everyday life

...