There's a particular kind of frustration that comes with waiting for something you want — a job, a relationship, a result, a door to open. You push, and the door doesn't move. Eventually something shifts, and sometimes — not always — you look back and think: if that had gone the way I wanted, I'd have walked straight past the thing that actually mattered.
I'm curious whether that has happened to anyone here. The delay that turned out to be protective. The no that redirected you somewhere better.
But I want to be honest about the other possibility too. Sometimes a closed door is just a closed door. The wait is just hard, and it doesn't resolve into a lesson. That's a real experience as well, and it deserves saying plainly rather than wrapping everything in retrospective meaning.
So: has the gap ever turned out to be the gift? Or did it just turn out to be the gap?