A Stage That Never Was

Text by Fei
Original image via Pinterest

I close my eyes, and for a fleeting moment, I am there—bathed in the golden glow of a spotlight, standing in the place where my heart has always belonged. The stage is ready beneath me, a rare certainty in a life of doubt. My pulse thrums with the rhythm of a song I was meant to sing. I move with a weightlessness I have never known, my voice carving through the silence like it was made to be heard. And when the applause comes—loud, unrelenting, an embrace I never had to beg for—I am not just existing. I am alive.

Then, like it always does, reality rips me away.

The stage crumbles into the cold hum of fluorescent lights. The music fades into the rustling of papers, the heavy scrape of expectation against my ribs. My feet do not dance—they run, chasing deadlines, drowning in obligations. My voice does not soar—it answers, complies, stifles itself into nothingness.

I do not get to stand beneath the lights. I do not get to let my soul spill into a world that was never shaped for it. Instead, I sit in the quiet corners of my existence, watching from the shadows as my dreams wilt beneath the weight of necessity.

I think of what could have been—if life had been kinder, if fate had not demanded sacrifice before I even knew what I was losing.

I think of what should have been—if passion had been currency enough to survive, if dreams could hold their ground against obligation, if I had ever been given permission to choose art over endurance.

I think of what would have been—if time had not betrayed me, if the world had not stripped me of my wings before I even knew how to fly.

I tell myself I do not resent the life I have, and maybe that is true. But the grief remains, buried beneath duty, beneath expectation, beneath every forced smile that hides the ache of an unlived life. I grieve for the girl I was meant to be, for the songs that will never be sung, for the version of me that was never given the chance to exist.

And yet—on the loneliest nights, when the world is quiet, I hum a melody only I remember. A song with no audience. A requiem for the girl who still waits in the wings.

Maybe, one day, she will step into the light. Maybe, one day, she will reclaim the stage that was always hers.