Terminal at 15

The vows were whispered in silence, no flowers, no veil, no ceremony, just a diagnosis sealed like a ring around my ribs. I was 15 when they handed me a lifetime. Not the kind you dream of. Not white lace or promises beneath church bells. This was different. This was marriage to something that does not love me back. I walked down no aisle, but still found myself standing at the altar of forever. Doctors dressed in white. My future rewritten in prescriptions and silent nods. There was no “for better or worse,” only this is how it will be now, spoken like scripture carved into the wall of a waiting room. My name was paired with it, like two people forced into a life together, a union of nerves and noise, of exhaustion and pretending. We sleep in the same body. We wake up side by side. It wraps itself around me like a lover, but it doesn’t hold me gently. It doesn’t ask if I’m ready. They don’t call it terminal, but it feels like a funeral for the version of me I’ll never become. I am mourning in silence while everyone else says congratulations for being “strong.” No one throws rice or raises glasses, just deadlines and expectations, just pills and noise and a future that walks slower than everyone else’s. I never said yes, but I’m still bound to it. Forever isn’t just for lovers. Sometimes it belongs to girls like me, who were handed a lifelong guest that never leaves, never quiets, never loosens its grip. There is no escape clause. No annulment. No clean break. Only me. And this. Forever.