it's not the way i imagined it.

you hear that your mother got married at 25 and you think by the age of 24 you will be picking out china patterns and planning your honeymoon. you imagine that you might be a tita, an aunt, and your nieces and nephews will crowd at your feet. you dream that you will make X amount of money and live in Y city and drive Z car. there are so many visions your mind conjures as a child, and although 24 seems like so far away, your picture of life is so clear.

then you wake up one day, and you don't know how you got there.

you don't have what your parents had or what your friends now have; somehow you took another fork on the road. you are in this alley around the corner from the onramp to the highway connecting to the freeway that goes straight to where they're going. you tell people all the things you are still going to do with your life, everything that waits ahead of you at the end of your windy, bumpy road. they look at you in awe, blinded by your glow. i am so young, you say (with a smile), but you don't tell them you feel so old (with a sigh).

and you wonder why you try to predict, why you even bother planning, because it never turns out the way you expect.

but it's easier, somehow, to watch the compass's true north, to keep referring to the map, to clutch onto your dreams, because they are the only tangible things you've got.