Before Life Catches Up - By Angelina Grace Shekinah Kowlessur

Written By: Angelina Grace Shekinah Kowlessur

Category: Prose

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

In her compelling piece, "Before Life Catches Up," Angelina Grace Shekinah Kowlessur invites readers into a profound reflection on identity and the choices we make. As part of the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026, this exploration of self-discovery and life’s quiet introspections resonates deeply with those standing at the crossroads of expectation and personal truth. Delve into Angelina's thoughtful prose as it navigates the delicate balance between societal pressures and the pursuit of a life authentically lived.

About the Work

"Before Life Catches Up" eloquently examines the nuanced journey of self-discovery and the quiet courage needed to embrace one's true desires. Angelina Grace Shekinah Kowlessur's writing is filled with introspective prose, exploring themes of identity, expectation, and the silent yet powerful awakening to one’s own life choices. Through vivid imagery and contemplative narrative, the piece challenges readers to question their path and encourages a thoughtful reflection on what it means to live genuinely.

Before Life Catches Up

Original Submission by Angelina Grace Shekinah Kowlessur

Before Life Catches Up

There are questions that arrive disguised as ordinary conversation. They do not announce themselves as thresholds, nor do they carry any warning of what they might disturb. They are asked, almost casually, and we answer them with the parts of ourselves that have become accustomed to answering.

I had become very good at those answers.

I knew what I wanted to study. I knew which direction I was expected to take, which future seemed sensible, which ambitions could be spoken aloud without having to justify them. I had spent so much time contemplating the architecture of a life that I had neglected the life itself; I knew how I wanted my future to look, yet had scarcely considered how I wanted it to feel.

Then came a question I had never thought to ask myself.

What do you want to do before life catches up to you?

Before it becomes serious. Before responsibilities acquire names and schedules and obligations, before the freedom of being young is slowly exchanged for the permanence of being needed.

I remember having no immediate answer.

It is strange, the silence that follows when you are asked something for which you have no rehearsed response. I had spent years learning to distinguish between what was sensible and what was foolish, between what was admirable and what was indulgent, between the dreams that could be defended and those that would invite raised eyebrows.

But this question seemed to require none of that.

It asked only for me.

So, for once, I tried to imagine a future without an audience.

And what emerged was not particularly grand.

I wanted to go backpacking.

Not merely to pass through places, but to discover them slowly, to meet the people who inhabit them, to understand their cultures and the countless ways a life can be lived. I wanted to make connections with people whose names I might one day forget but whose stories would remain somewhere in me. I wanted to wander without knowing exactly where I would end up, to encounter lives completely different from my own and, somehow, recognise something human in all of them.

I wanted to feel alive.

And when I said this aloud, there was no strange silence waiting to judge the answer. There was recognition. The quiet kind, the kind that requires no explanation because, somehow, the feeling had already been understood.

I think that was what made something in me loosen.

There is an intimacy in being understood before you have learned how to explain yourself. It is not the intimacy of confession, nor the dramatic certainty of being completely known. It is something gentler: the relief of discovering that a thought you had kept hidden beneath layers of practicality does not sound foolish when another person hears it.

For a moment, I did not feel the need to defend my own desires.

And perhaps that was when the question became larger than itself.

Because what do you want to do before life catches up to you?

If I was honest, I did not only want to travel.

I wanted a life that felt like mine.

Not the theatrical freedom of severing every tie and vanishing without consequence, but something quieter and, perhaps, more difficult: the ability to make a choice without immediately imagining how it would appear to someone else. To want something without first calculating whether wanting it was reasonable. To live without treating every decision as evidence for or against the person I was becoming.

I realised how exhausting it is to live beneath an imagined gaze.

How easily the opinions of others become so deeply internalised that eventually they no longer need to speak. We anticipate them for them. We reject ourselves before anyone else has the opportunity.

And somewhere along the way, expectation begins to masquerade as identity.

We say I want when what we really mean is I have learned that I should want this.

We say this is my dream because it is easier than admitting that we have never stopped to ask whether the dream belongs to us at all.

That realisation unsettled me.

Because beneath all the certainty I had accumulated about my future was a much less certain question: who was I when nobody was telling me who I ought to become?

I began to notice the parts of myself I had made smaller simply because they were inconvenient to the life I thought I was supposed to build. The artistic part. The restless part. The part that wanted to experience before analysing, to create before proving, to live before knowing exactly where it was all going.

None of those desires had disappeared.

I had simply become skilled at silencing them.

And there was something almost painful about realising that.

Not because I had lost myself, but because I had been there all along.

Perhaps we do not always lose ourselves in some dramatic act of becoming someone else. Sometimes we abandon ourselves gradually, almost politely, each time we choose what is expected over what is true, each time we call a desire impractical before allowing ourselves to discover what it might have become.

I think I had been doing that for longer than I knew.

Then, unexpectedly, I encountered a different way of looking at life.

Someone who seemed to understand that life was not merely the corridor leading towards some more important room. That there was something worth noticing before everything became serious, something worth living for before the future demanded to be lived for.

There was a certain ease in that perspective that I found myself drawn towards, not because it was perfect, nor because it meant there were no fears or uncertainties, but because it made me question the constant tension I had mistaken for responsibility.

It made me wonder why I had been holding myself so tightly.

Why I had been living so far ahead of myself that I was perpetually arriving late to the present.

I do not think that person gave me an answer.

That is what makes the memory meaningful.

Nothing was handed to me. No revelation was placed neatly in my hands. There was only a question, a conversation, a moment of recognition, and then the long, private work of answering it for myself.

Perhaps that is the most another person can ever give us.

Not a map.

Not a definition.

Not the key to who we are.

Only a light held briefly over a door we had forgotten was there.

The rest is ours.

And I am still standing in that doorway.

I still do not know exactly who I will become. I still carry the expectations I have spent years learning to carry. I still catch myself measuring my choices against futures that have not happened and opinions that may never be spoken.

But now I notice.

Now, when I hear myself say I should, I sometimes stop and ask whether I mean I want.

It is a small distinction.

But it has begun to change the shape of things.

Because maybe becoming yourself is not about discovering some hidden, finished version of who you were always meant to be.

Maybe it is simply the gradual courage to stop abandoning the person who has been waiting underneath everything you were told to become.

And perhaps that is what I was given that day, not an answer, but a question I could finally call my own.

Who would I be if I stopped asking for permission to live as myself?

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar is a prestigious event celebrating the art of written expression. This international platform welcomes voices from around the world, offering participants an opportunity to share their unique narratives and poetic insights. The competition is dedicated to fostering creativity and providing a stage for emerging writers to explore and express their literary talents.

Thank you, Angelina Grace Shekinah Kowlessur, for your insightful contribution to the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. "Before Life Catches Up" beautifully captures the essence of introspection and the journey toward authentic living. We appreciate your willingness to share such personal reflections and look forward to seeing how your literary journey unfolds.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.