When she was sixteen, she mapped out her dreams on Post-its and stuck them all over the walls of her room. Every day, she kept on making a note and woke up with the promise of certainty around her. If she could write them down and read them over and over again, they just had to come true... that's what she thought. During that time, she's still naive with obstacles, hindrances and consequences of the world. Little did she know, it's a backwards, messed up freak show world we live in.
As the years passed, the notes have been taking down one by one without her knowing it, or maybe she did, she just didn't paid any attention to it anymore.
Until she woke up to an empty wall.
Perhaps, she realized they weren't really what she wanted and she had nothing else in mind to replace them with yet. Her mom was the first to reassure her that she didn't need any Post-its to give her any sign nor direction to keep going in life, she has mind to steer her, and the anchor of a heart to keep her. She also added, she still have a Post-its anyway, she just have to make a new note whenever she wants to. She digress to that fact, not because she loathed her mom's opinion or anything but because she just felt she'll grow up if she keeps on making a new changes in her life and that's the point she'd never want to grow up.
Her eyes darted to the mirror and all she saw was her brown wavy hair sticking out in all the wrong places. She wept for summer rains and things that are no longer so she cut an inch and watched the strands fall to the floor. For a while she stood there, snipping and watching her own reflection until she was staring at someone she did not recognize. All that she has spent so much time for growing, just a pile on the floor. The way things change in an instant or the way she rocked herself to lullabies of yesteryears that day when she remember how she cried for regrets, what ifs, and what could have beens, she couldn't just wrap her head around the idea of how life goes by so quickly.
As time passed, she's growing up and she went on viaduct, on what seemingly felt like the edge of the world, and let all the Post-its she once had on her walls fly off with the wind, off into the great wide unknown. Still, every morning her hand runs to her head looking for the missing hair and she realized goodbyes don't happen in airports, funerals, graduation day or parting of memories. You do it in different ways, in ways only you know how. You let go slowly, saying goodbye one day at a time.
While she was writing this, she remembers the note she knew by heart. The note read: 'The world awaits. Go when you can. You will never be ready.' And with that, she promised to keep waking up for a Post-its and living a life full of pictures that's worth a thousand stories. After all the latter are taken by survivors.