I used to believe that being careful would save me. That if I thought long enough, waited long enough, imagined every possible ending, I could protect myself from making the wrong choice. So I asked myself questions. What if I fail? What if they leave? What if I lose everything? What if I finally try, only to discover that I was never enough? Every question became another wall. Every doubt became another window looking into a life I was too afraid to enter. Every possibility became another empty frame. And without realizing it, I built an entire world around everything that might go wrong. I called it preparation. I called it patience. I called it being realistic. But the truth was much simpler. I was afraid. Afraid of choosing something I couldn't undo. Afraid of becoming someone I wouldn't recognize. Afraid that the future might hurt me more than the present already did. So I stayed where I was. Days passed. Then months. Then years. And while I was busy protecting myself from things that hadn't happened, I lost things that could have. I lost chances to love. Chances to begin again. Chances to become the person I kept imagining. Eventually, I stopped asking what might go wrong. And started wondering what might have gone right. That's when I finally noticed the opening. There had never been a locked door. No chains. No walls strong enough to hold me. Only the thousand invisible reasons I had given myself not to move. And perhaps that was the cruelest realization of all. **I wasn't imprisoned by my mistakes.** **I was imprisoned by the mistakes I was too afraid to make.** Now I sit surrounded by futures that never existed, grieving lives I never allowed myself to live. The way out is still there. It always was. And maybe freedom doesn't begin when fear disappears. Maybe it begins the moment we decide that fear no longer gets to choose for us. **I built a prison out of maybes.** **And called it being careful.** --- *I Built a Prison Out of Maybes is an original conceptual digital fine-art sculpture by RENIXA.* *A monument to the lives we never lived because we were afraid of what might happen.*