Some Dreams Don’t Disappear. They Just Wait—Until You’re Strong Enough to Carry Them Again

There was a time I thought dreams had expiration dates.

I believed that if you didn’t chase them fast enough, or hard enough, or successfully enough, they’d vanish—like balloons let loose into the sky. I told myself the dream I had in my early twenties was foolish. I buried it beneath jobs I didn’t love, relationships that didn’t understand, and years that blurred together.

But some dreams are different.

Some don’t disappear.

They just wait.

They wait for you to grow.

They wait for you to fall.

They wait for you to become the kind of person who can finally carry them.

This is the story of how I found mine again.

I was 22 when I first realized I wanted to write. Not just casually. Not just in journals or tweet-length thoughts. I wanted to tell stories that lived longer than conversations. I wanted to string together words that mattered.

It started with a short story contest in college. The theme was "truth hidden in fiction." I stayed up all night writing about a girl who wrote letters to her future self. I submitted it with trembling hands.

It didn’t win.

But something sparked.

For weeks after that, I wrote feverishly. Stories. Essays. Bits of dialogue I heard in dreams. I even started a blog called “The Quiet Revolution,” which got about 17 readers—12 of whom were my friends. But I didn’t care. I was chasing something that felt right.

Then life happened.

After graduation, the pressure to “get serious” started to smother me. My parents were proud of me, but writing? That wasn’t a career—it was a “hobby.” And hobbies didn’t pay rent.

So I got a marketing job. Then another. I filled my days with meetings and spreadsheets, KPIs and coffee. I told myself I was lucky to have stability.

But at night, I’d stare at my blinking cursor in Word and feel like I’d betrayed something sacred.

Eventually, I stopped opening Word.

Stopped jotting ideas in my phone.

Stopped thinking of myself as a writer at all.

The dream hadn’t died—but I had put it in a locked room in my mind and thrown away the key.

It wasn’t one moment that broke me—it was a thousand little ones.

The promotions that didn’t fulfill me.

The weekends that passed in a haze of Netflix and numbness.

The voice in my head that whispered, “Is this it?”

Then came the layoff.

Unexpected. Brutal. I was a name on a spreadsheet someone deleted.

I felt like a failure. Not because I lost my job—but because I realized I’d spent years building a version of myself that felt empty inside.

And in that silence, something stirred.

A memory.

A voice.

A story idea.

It was faint. Fragile. But it was there.

The dream hadn’t left me.

It took me weeks to even say it out loud:

"I think I want to write again."

I whispered it to a friend over coffee, like it was a confession. She didn’t laugh. She nodded. “You should,” she said. “You always lit up when you talked about stories.”

So I started small.

Notebooks. Prompts. Freewriting.

At first, my words stumbled. My fingers felt stiff. I hated every sentence. But I kept going.

And then something happened. One night, I lost track of time while writing. Three hours passed like minutes. My heart beat faster—not with anxiety, but with recognition.

I remembered who I was.

I decided to write a story I had buried for five years. A semi-autobiographical piece about grief, healing, and memory. I didn’t write it to publish—I wrote it because it haunted me.

When I finished, I cried. Not because it was perfect—but because I had done it. I had finally honored the part of me I’d silenced.

On a whim, I submitted it to Vocal.

To my surprise, it got featured.

That single feature didn’t make me famous. It didn’t pay my bills. But it gave me something far more valuable:

Belief.

In my voice.

In my story.

In the dream I thought I had lost.

I used to think success meant book deals and bestseller lists.

Now I think it’s this:

Showing up for your dream, even when no one is watching.

Since that day, I’ve written dozens of stories. Some have done well. Some haven’t. But every single one has brought me closer to the person I was always meant to be.

Writing didn’t save my life in a dramatic, movie-script way. It saved it quietly. Softly. Sentence by sentence.

If you’re reading this and thinking about the dream you shelved… I’m here to tell you something:

It’s still there.

It hasn’t given up on you.

It’s just waiting.

And maybe you weren’t ready back then. That’s okay.

Dreams don’t punish you for being human.

They wait for you to grow strong enough to carry them again.

And when you are…

They will meet you with open arms and ask:

“Shall we try again?"

I no longer make grand declarations like, “I’m going to be the next big thing.”

Now, I just say:

“I’m a writer.”

And I write.

Because some dreams don’t expire. They just wait in the quiet, trusting that one day, you’ll come back.

And when you do, they’ll whisper:

“I never left.”