for ever?

Has forever already started?

We always hear about something "lasting forever," or "feeling like forever," but we never get to forever. What does forever even mean? 

For ever seems to suggest continuity, a connecting thread that lies within the past and has itself wrapped around the present, already looking for a needle's loop to attach itself to for future stitching. 

But we say forever like it's a verdict, a finality, something that means "the end," whatever endings mean for one person or another. 

I personally would like to imagine forever as something out there - in the future waiting to be comprehended and understood and yet not fully ever grasped. 

But everything around me says that forever starts now; whatever I do or think or believe right here and now necessarily affects forever. But I say forever hasn't happened yet. It isn't here. 

You make your own forever as you imagine it to be. You keep dancing and crying and thinking and napping and drinking and venting and learning and living, and you tell forever that what all that means right now to you doesn't have to dictate what it will mean for you later - tomorrow or thirty years from now. 

Hold on, forever.

I'm not ready for you yet.