She said, "I'll never be famous."

I have a really wonderful friend I found through teaching. She's dealt with a severe amount of trauma in her life and has managed to remain romantic and soft and kind. She's older than I am, in her fifties, and the idea for creating summer goals came through her. She uses many well-developed self-care routines to help keep her stable mentally. Using goals and routines is essential for Pam and I love hearing about the intricacies of these practices.
When we were last hanging out on her porch, she was explaining that her goal for this summer was to become more spiritual and at peace in the present moment. She said she has a nice life and she wants to appreciate it instead of listening to her head spin constantly. She said, "I'll never be famous. I just want to be happy and really see the trees and the lake."
I was struck by the recognition that at a certain point, there are things you can't hope for anymore. My boyfriend told me a long time ago that he realized before going to sleep one night that he would never dunk a basketball and I could tell that this crushed a part of his soul. I remember feeling flooded with dread when I found out I was no longer eligible to try out to be on The Real World on MTV.
It's sad, maybe, when there's a finality about the way our lives turned out. My first reaction is to tell my boyfriend to get a mini-trampoline under the hoop and work that shit out or suggest that Pam write a best seller. I think the point of allowing yourself to say, this thing isn't going to happen for me, is still lost on me. I bet there's calm in it somewhere. To me, it seems like a huge, sad loss to say anything is fully out of the cards. Like, maybe I will still join the circus or figure out how to drop in on a skateboard.
Again, I won't ever do these things, and a part of me knows this, but I sort of refuse to accept it. I still own a skateboard. I still watch reality TV shows on PBS about circus families. I still allow myself to dream about any little thing that amuses me. Maybe the point for me is that, once it's a foregone conclusion in reality, it's less exciting to daydream about and I refuse to limit my daydreams. Or maybe I will move to Italy and learn to walk the tight rope.
What I'm trying to say is, until I'm deep in the ground or a soft mound of ash, I prefer to imagine that there's room for me in many different scenarios of life. I prefer to think that the road ahead is still limitless and mysterious and filled with stuff that will fulfill some part of some daydreams, if not all of them in their entirety.