Someday, I will die. No matter how long I try to postpone it, my life will come to an end, not in a blaze of glory or a thunderous finale, but in a quiet stillness, like the tide slipping back into the sea. But before that day comes, I will have lived, not just existed, but truly lived. I will have laughed and cried over things both deeply meaningful and entirely trivial. I will have held silence in my hands and shaped it into peace. I will have known pain, not once or twice but endlessly, and though the wounds may not fully disappear, I will have healed enough to rise again. I will have looked into the mirror, sometimes despising the reflection, sometimes marveling at the strength behind my own eyes. I will have carried grief, heavy and necessary, shaping me into something real. I will have failed, publicly and privately, but never stopped trying, not because I had to, but because something inside me refused to give up. I will have learned to forgive myself, not with dramatic proclamations, but with small, quiet choices to keep moving. I will have loved, imperfectly but wholeheartedly, and even when heartbreak came, I will have walked away with trembling hands and a lifted head. I will have created things, maybe odd or unimpressive, but they’ll be mine, understood if only by me. I will have stayed up through the night, whispering truths into the dark, staring up at the stars until they whispered back. I will have grown and changed into someone I never imagined, and I will have let go of things I once thought I couldn’t live without. And when the final moment comes, I hope I don’t claw at the pages, desperate to rewrite the past, but instead smile, knowing every line, even the painful ones, mattered. Someday my story will end, but I won’t disappear. I will echo in everything that made me, me.