The Future You Might Become

I sometimes see the person I almost became standing quietly behind me, a version of myself

built from every excuse I once tried to defend. He looks familiar, because he was shaped

by the same mornings I chose to be lazy, the same warnings I chose to ignore, and the same small

decisions I told myself did not matter. He did not become broken in one dramatic moment,

he became ordinary in the most dangerous way: slowly, silently, comfortably.

I realize now that the future is never created by one big mistake, but by the habits

we repeat when nothing seems wrong. I did not escape him by changing everything at once,

I escaped him by stopping just in time. And in the end, I understood something