A fleeting dream in through the looking glass.

I will never be the same person.

As I awake every morning, almost always before the alarm, it’s already in my head. And I lay there, every single day, consumed by thoughts of what happened and what’s not to be.

I think about how grateful I am that the shot-in-the-dark offer we made on that two-bedroom down the hall a few months ago didn’t go through, but I’m simultaneously crushed that there are no vestiges of adulthood for us to celebrate anytime soon.

I smile deeply as I hold our friends’ baby in my lap and she grabs at my face, but then I can hardly conceal my grief when the mothers in our group of friends walk off together to chat about their shared experience, the one I can’t possibly know, the one I’m not sure I’ll ever know.

“Are you having a baby?” my coworker excitedly whispers to me, running into me on our way to the restroom. I sit in the stall silently sobbing. “No.”

We are but “a broken shard, withering grass, a fading flower, a passing shade, a dissipating cloud, a blowing wind, flying dust, and a fleeting dream.” I find the words running through my head often.

Will I ever trust enough to feel hope again?