Time feels different when you know it's not infinite. For most people, love is something they trust will find them eventually—a slow-burning inevitability. But for me, it feels like a race I might not finish, a beautiful thing hanging just out of reach as the clock ticks louder with every passing day.
I'm scared I won't have enough time to fall in love. Real love, the kind that people write songs and poems about, the kind that makes your heart swell and your chest ache in the best way. I want to know what it feels like to be seen—truly seen—and still chosen, not despite the parts of me that are broken but because of all the parts that are whole. I want someone to know my story and love me anyway, not out of pity but because they see something worth loving.
But I wonder, who could love someone whose future feels like a question mark? Who could fall for someone with lungs that betray them, with scars that tell a story of battles fought and battles lost? I'm scared that no one will take the chance, that my "too much" and my "not enough" will outweigh everything else.
Sometimes, I imagine it. Meeting someone who doesn't flinch when I talk about hospital stays or the machines that keep me breathing. Someone who doesn't look at my medicine cabinet like it's a signpost of doom. Someone who can hold the weight of my reality without letting it crush what we could build together. I imagine laughing with them until I can't breathe, the kind of joy that makes you forget anything hurts.
But what if I run out of time before that happens? Before I can feel their hand in mine, before I can look into someone's eyes and see my future there? The thought grips me in quiet moments, filling me with a kind of ache that no treatment can soothe. I don't just want to be loved—I want to have the chance to give love, to know what it feels like to pour my whole self into someone else without holding back.
I don't want cystic fibrosis to take this from me too. It's already stolen so much—time, freedom, normalcy. But I won't let it take the dream of love. Even if it's fleeting, even if it's complicated and messy, I want to feel it. I want to hold it. I want to know it was real.
I don't know how much time I have left. But I do know this: I want to spend whatever time I have chasing what matters. And love? Love matters. It's worth the fear, the risk, and the hope that refuses to die, no matter how scared I am.
