Through the Fog

Author: Emery Lane Grey

  • Fragile

    Recovery isn’t the clean, steady climb people imagine it to be.

    It’s not a straight line, and it’s not always inspiring.

    Sometimes it’s messy and painful — full of steps backward, relapses of thought, and nights spent questioning whether I’m really getting better or just getting used to the ache.

    I’m fragile in recovery.

    I wake up some days full of hope, and by nightfall, I’m drowning in doubt again. The smallest thing — a memory, a song, a smell — can pull me back into the dark, and I hate how easily I break. But breaking is part of it. Healing doesn’t mean the cracks disappear; it means learning how to live with them.

    People think recovery is about strength, but I’ve learned it’s mostly about endurance — about showing up when your hands are still shaking. About forgiving yourself when you fall apart again, even after promising you wouldn’t.

    There’s no finish line here.

    No moment where I suddenly become whole again.

    There’s just me — fragile, trembling, trying.

    And maybe that’s enough.

    Maybe being fragile in recovery means I’m still fighting,

    still choosing life,

    even when the weight of it threatens to break me.

  • A Cold Wind’s Been Blowing Again

    A cold wind’s been blowing again.

    Not the kind that rattles the windows,

    but the kind that settles inside your bones—

    quiet, heavy, and impossible to shake.

    It shows up without warning.

    You’re fine one moment,

    and then the air shifts.

    You can feel it—the change,

    the ache, the way the past starts whispering again.

    It’s strange how memory carries its own weather.

    Lately, it’s been winter where my heart lives.

    Old ghosts drift through the halls,

    and everything feels a little too still,

    a little too empty.

    I try to convince myself it’s just the season,

    but I know better.

    Some storms come back

    just to remind you they never really left.

    I’ve learned to stop fighting the wind.

    To let it move through me,

    to let it tear down what’s brittle

    and leave behind only what’s strong enough to stay.

    Maybe that’s what healing really is—

    not the absence of the storm,

    but the quiet acceptance

    that it will always return from time to time.

    And when it does,

    I’ll wrap my arms around myself,

    take a deep breath,

    and whisper into the cold air—

    You can’t take what I’ve already learned to live without.

  • The Weight of Loving The Broken

    You’ll never truly know

    how broken someone is

    until you try to love them—

    until your hands meet the cracks

    they’ve spent years hiding,

    until your kindness echoes

    in rooms where only silence has lived.

    They’ll flinch from gentle words

    as if softness were a threat.

    They’ll test your patience

    like a child lost in a storm,

    unsure if safety can exist without pain.

    And if you stay long enough,

    you’ll learn that love

    isn’t always light.

    Sometimes it’s holding someone

    while their darkness spills out,

    and realizing

    you can’t fix them—

    only love them through the breaking.

  • The Ocean at Dusk

    There’s something about the ocean that feels infinite.

    You can stand there for hours,

    watching the water breathe in and out,

    and still feel like you’ve barely seen it at all.

    When the sun begins to sink,

    the light turns to honey —

    soft, forgiving, alive.

    It touches the waves like a promise,

    and the horizon becomes a line between what is and what could be.

    In that hour, everything slows.

    The noise quiets,

    the thoughts settle.

    Even grief seems to pause long enough to listen.

    The ocean doesn’t demand anything from you.

    It just exists — endless, patient, vast.

    And somehow, that’s enough to remind you that you can, too.

    Watching the sun go down feels like watching hope shift form —

    it doesn’t disappear;

    it just changes colors.

    And when it finally slips beneath the water,

    you realize you’ve been holding your breath the whole time.

    The ocean is breathtaking not because it’s perfect,

    but because it reminds you of everything that still moves,

    still lives,

    still shines,

    even after the day ends.

  • And All I Loved, I Loved Alone

    Photo Credit: Parker Sturdivant

    There’s a strange kind of beauty in loneliness —

    not the cinematic kind where rain falls softly against the window and someone reaches for your hand,

    but the kind that aches in silence,

    where the only heartbeat you hear is your own.

    Maybe that’s always been me.

    The quiet observer. The one who feels everything too deeply and still says nothing.

    I used to think love would fix that —

    that it would fill the hollow space inside me where all the echoes live.

    But love never stayed long enough to understand the language of my silence.

    I’ve loved people, moments, dreams that dissolved before I could hold them.

    I’ve watched laughter fade into distance, and promises into static.

    They said I was guarded, hard to read, maybe even cold.

    But they never saw how fiercely I felt everything —

    how my heart broke in private,

    how I carried every loss like it still had a pulse.

    “And all I loved, I loved alone.”

    Poe said that.

    And maybe he understood what it means to love like that —

    to pour yourself into people who never notice the depth of it,

    to find beauty in the ache of solitude.

    Because love, when you’ve been hurt enough, becomes something quieter.

    It’s not fireworks — it’s endurance.

    It’s learning to sit in the dark and still care.

    To keep loving even when no one stays.

    To keep believing that maybe, just maybe, that’s enough.

    Sometimes, I think being alone doesn’t mean you’re unloved.

    It just means you’re the one who loves hardest —

    in silence,

    in absence,

    in the fog.

  • The Good That Happens

    Photo credit: Dewang Gupta

    Sometimes nothing good happens to you because you’re the good that happens to others.

    It doesn’t mean you’re forgotten or unlucky — it just means your presence is the quiet miracle in someone else’s story.

    You may never see the way your kindness changes a day, or how your words soften the edge of someone’s breaking point. You might not notice the peace you leave behind when you walk away — but it lingers, even when you don’t.

    Maybe that’s what being good really is.

    Not a reward, not recognition, but the small, unseen ways your existence steadies the world around you.

    And maybe one day, when you least expect it, something good will find you — not because you went searching, but because the world finally circles back to remind you that your light has always mattered.

  • Stuck

    You’re not stuck because you can’t, you’re stuck because you won’t.

    That line won’t stop echoing in my head. It’s brutal — because it’s true.

    I’ve spent so long blaming the world, the pain, the past, the people who broke me. But the truth is, I’ve built my own walls and then called them safety. I’ve chosen the comfort of misery over the risk of change. It’s easier to sit in the ruin I know than to walk toward something uncertain.

    There’s a twisted kind of peace in staying stuck — it asks nothing of me except surrender. No effort, no failure, just the quiet hum of stagnation disguised as survival.

    But I know better. I’m not trapped — I’m avoiding. Avoiding the climb, the fall, the chance that something might actually work out. Because what if it doesn’t? What if I get free and still feel empty?

    Maybe that’s the scariest part — realizing I could move, but choosing not to.

  • When the Fire Comes

    Photo Credit: Adam Wilson

    Rage is roaring like a fire out of control.

    It starts small — a flicker, a tremor in my chest — then suddenly it’s everywhere. Burning through reason, devouring silence, leaving only ash behind.

    I don’t even know what I’m angry at half the time. Maybe it’s everything. Maybe it’s myself. The way I keep trying to hold it all together when I know damn well I’m unraveling.

    There’s a part of me that wants to scream until my voice gives out. To throw something, to break something, just to prove I still exist — that there’s something alive inside me after all the numbness.

    But I don’t. I swallow it. I smile when I’m supposed to. I nod when people talk. I hide the fire and let it burn me from the inside out.

    Sometimes I think rage is just grief wearing armor — a way to feel powerful when all I really feel is broken.

  • I Just Want Someone to Save Me

    Photo Credit: lilartsy

    I just want someone to save me. Not fix me. Not offer pep talks or promises. Just drag me out of this black water before I go under for good.

    Most days I feel like I’m already halfway gone. Everyone thinks I’m functioning, but it’s all masks. I smile, I nod, I pretend I’m okay while something inside me keeps whispering, let go. I keep waiting for somebody to see through it, to reach in before it’s too late, but no one ever does.

    I don’t want a hero. I don’t want someone to tell me I’m strong. I want somebody who won’t run when I’m ugly, when I’m drunk, when I’m shaking, when I’m no longer easy to love. Someone who doesn’t leave when I mess up. Someone who proves I’m still worth fighting for even when I’m not sure I am.

    I’ve been surviving for so long it feels like a reflex. Walls instead of warmth. Silence instead of asking. And the more I do it, the more I start to believe the lie that maybe I’m not supposed to be saved. Maybe this is it — me, drowning quietly while the world keeps moving.

    Some nights I imagine just stopping. No more fighting, no more treading, just sinking until the noise fades. It scares me how much relief that thought brings. It scares me that I don’t even fight it anymore.

    I just want someone to save me, even if only for a moment, even if only to show me I’m not completely lost yet. Because I don’t know how many more nights like this I can stand.

  • Ghost in My Own Skin

    Photo Credit “lilartsy”

    Dead with a pulse

    and softly losing control,

    I move through rooms like smoke,

    breathing but not alive,

    fading but still here,

    a ghost in my own skin

    no one notices.

    Sometimes I wonder if I even notice myself anymore.

    There’s a strange kind of comfort in invisibility—

    it saves me from the weight of pretending.

    But it’s lonely, too.

    To exist in the space between seen and unseen,

    alive and not really living.

    Maybe this is what it means to disappear

    without ever leaving.