Nobody tells you that waiting has a sound.

It is the echo of congratulatory messages you keep typing while swallowing the lump in your own throat.

It is clapping until your palms sting because your friends deserve every celebration, then going home to question yourself about what exactly you've done wrong.

I had dreams that refused to fit inside my pockets.

Dreams so loud I thought they would outrun time itself.

I was going to arrive early. I was going to be "the one." The girl with the testimony before everyone else found theirs.

Instead, life asked me to sit.

"Just wait."

As if waiting were simple.

As if my heart didn't know how to compare timelines.

One by one, people I started beside became people I was trying to catch.

Their names became announcements.

Mine became "soon."

I mastered the art of smiling in photographs while wondering why mine was the only story that had forgotten how to move.

I questioned God so often I started feeling guilty for praying.

Because what kind of faith keeps checking the clock?

What kind of hope keeps trying the lock of the same door expecting it to finally open?

The hardest part wasn't even the delay.

It was watching life continue without asking if I was ready to be left behind.

People outgrew versions of themselves while I was still trying to convince mine that she wasn't failing.

Waiting has a strange way of introducing you to yourself.

There are things success could never have taught me.

Patience that cried before it learned to breathe.

The courage to celebrate people without making their victories an accusation against my 'delays.'

Of course, most of them are still ahead of me.

Some have travelled farther, built bigger, arrived sooner.

Sometimes I still notice.

Sometimes it still pinches.

Healing is honest like that.

But I no longer measure my life with someone else's ruler.

Because the girl who once begged for any open door has learned that some closed doors were PROTECTION. 

Some were preparation, making room for a version of me that couldn't be handled by my former self. 

I've learned that seasons don't apologise for arriving when they do.

Neither will I.

When my time finally blooms, it won't be because I outran everyone else.

It will be because, after all that waiting, I still chose to grow.