Through the Fog

Author: Emery Lane Grey

  • For the Very First Time

    I feel so alone

    for the very first time—

    not the quiet kind of lonely,

    but the hollow kind,

    the kind that echoes

    when I breathe.

    I feel like I’m letting go,

    like something inside me

    has slipped through my fingers

    while I wasn’t looking.

    Every little thing

    feels heavier than it should—

    like I’m carrying a sky

    that forgot how to hold itself.

    And fear…

    fear has come to stay.

    Not as a visitor,

    but as a shadow

    curling around my feet,

    following me from room to room

    as if it knows

    I’m too tired to fight it tonight.

    But even in this quiet collapse,

    even in this trembling place,

    some small part of me

    is still reaching—

    for light,

    for warmth,

    for anything that reminds me

    I don’t have to face this alone.

  • Spite Outshines the Sun

    So you’ll always have your time to shine,

    even in the winter of your darkest hour.

    Not a blazing sun—

    just a flicker, a pulse,

    the last light in a body that refuses to die.

    Some nights the world will feel engineered

    to swallow you whole,

    to freeze every soft part of you solid.

    You’ll mistake numbness for peace,

    silence for safety,

    and you’ll wonder if the darkness

    is the only thing that ever truly understood you.

    But even then—

    in the coldest corner of your own mind,

    where even your breath trembles—

    something small will keep glowing,

    not out of hope,

    but out of spite.

    A refusal to disappear.

    A spark no night has earned.

    A reminder that the world can’t bury

    what it never built.

    Not all light is gentle.

    Some of it survives by burning.

  • Who I Thought I Was

    I’m not who I thought I was,

    and I’m terrified I never will be.

    The image I held of myself—

    steady, certain,

    someone who knew where they were going—

    has slipped through my hands

    like water I couldn’t hold onto.

    I look in the mirror

    and don’t recognize the eyes staring back,

    don’t recognize the heaviness

    or the tired shape of my own hope.

    I keep wondering

    how I drifted so far from the person

    I swore I’d become.

    Was it one small choice?

    A hundred little ones?

    Or the weight I carried

    quietly enough that no one noticed

    how much it changed me?

    I’m not who I thought I was,

    but maybe that’s the truth

    I needed to face—

    that growing hurts,

    that becoming someone new

    often feels like losing

    everything you expected to be.

    And yes, I’m terrified

    I never will be that version of me—

    but there’s a small, trembling part

    that wonders

    if maybe who I’m becoming

    is someone worth meeting, too.

  • The War Was With Myself

    All this time,

    I thought I was fighting the world—

    the people who left,

    the ghosts that stayed,

    the weight that never lifted.

    But the truth is uglier.

    The war was with myself.

    Every battle fought in silence,

    every wound I swore didn’t hurt,

    every night I begged the mirror

    to stop reflecting back a stranger.

    I blamed the world for breaking me,

    but I was the one holding the hammer.

    I kept swinging,

    trying to make sense of the pain,

    trying to carve something worth saving

    out of the wreckage of me.

    And maybe that’s what survival really is—

    not victory,

    not peace,

    just the quiet after the fight,

    when you finally lay your weapon down

    and whisper,

    I’m still here.

  • Slurring All Your Words

    You were slurring all your words,

    not making any sense,

    laughing at things that weren’t funny,

    stumbling through sentences

    like the ground kept shifting.

    I watched the light in your eyes

    flicker in and out,

    like you were here,

    but only halfway—

    the rest of you drowning

    in whatever you were trying to escape.

    It wasn’t cute,

    or wild,

    or free.

    It was the kind of broken

    you pretend is a good time

    until the room goes quiet

    and you finally hear

    how far you’ve fallen.

    And maybe you didn’t notice,

    but I did—

    every cracked edge,

    every swallowed feeling,

    every truth you were too gone to say.

    You weren’t making sense…

    but the pain beneath it?

    That part was loud.

  • A Fucking Liability

    There’s a certain kind of shame

    that comes with getting older

    and realizing

    you still don’t have it figured out.

    Like—

    wasn’t I supposed to be stable by now?

    Grounded?

    Proud of the person staring back at me

    in the mirror?

    Instead—

    some mornings I wake up

    and it feels like I’m just

    a grown child

    wearing adult skin.

    Still making the same mistakes.

    Still learning lessons

    I should’ve mastered

    years ago.

    I’m 35 years old—

    and still a fucking liability.

    Not just to other people—

    to myself.

    And it’s not loud anymore.

    That’s the thing.

    It used to be chaos.

    Reckless.

    Obvious.

    Now?

    It’s quiet.

    It’s forgetting to eat.

    It’s isolating.

    It’s replaying conversations

    like they’re crimes

    I need to confess to.

    It’s sitting in a room

    with my own thoughts

    and realizing

    I don’t know how to turn them off.

    I tell myself—

    “you should be better by now.”

    But “better” feels like a word

    that belongs

    to other people.

    People who figured it out.

    People who don’t wake up

    feeling like they’re already behind

    in a race

    they never signed up for.

    And I’m tired.

    God, I’m tired.

    Tired of surviving.

    Tired of explaining

    why I’m still not okay.

    Why things that look simple

    feel impossible.

    Tired of pretending

    I’m not drowning

    just because

    I learned how to stay quiet

    while it’s happening.

    Because everyone else

    looks like they’re swimming just fine.

    And me?

    I’m just…

    trying not to sink

    in front of them.

    But here’s the part

    I don’t say out loud—

    Somewhere,

    deep under all of this—

    I still want to believe

    I can be more than this.

    That maybe

    “liability”

    doesn’t mean

    worthless.

    Maybe it just means

    unfinished.

    Still in progress.

    Still carrying things

    I never asked to hold.

    Still trying—

    even when I don’t know

    what I’m trying for anymore.

    So yeah—

    I’m 35

    and still a fucking liability.

    But I’m also

    still here.

    And maybe—

    just maybe—

    that counts

    for something.

  • When I Dream

    When I dream,

    all I see is your face—

    not the version I tell the world about,

    but the one I still can’t look at

    without something in me breaking.

    My mind spills the truth at night,

    because sleep is the only place

    I don’t get to lie.

    The pain shows up unmasked,

    unfiltered,

    unapologetic—

    like it’s been waiting for the silence.

    But when I wake,

    I put the armor back on.

    I cover up how I feel

    with practiced smiles

    and sentences I don’t believe.

    People ask how I’m doing,

    and I give them the safe answer,

    the one that keeps the room comfortable.

    Nobody wants to hear

    that I still bleed in dreams.

    Nobody wants the version of me

    that doesn’t heal neatly.

    So I swallow it.

    The grief.

    The guilt.

    The nights that still replay like a warning.

    I only tell the truth in sleep—

    because the daylight demands performance,

    and I’ve gotten good at pretending

    I’m not still haunted.

  • Sleepless Nights

    Sleepless nights

    stretch out like highways—

    quiet, endless,

    full of thoughts I wish

    would leave me alone.

    I lie awake

    counting the things I can’t fix,

    listening to the clock

    drag its feet,

    feeling the weight of every memory

    that refuses to fade.

    And somewhere between midnight

    and whatever comes after,

    I start to wonder

    if sleep is avoiding me—

    or if I’m avoiding myself.

  • Monsters

    There were monsters under the bed

    when I was small —

    shadows that crept when the lights went out,

    teeth made of night,

    hands made of nothing but fear.

    Mama said they weren’t real,

    just tricks of the dark.

    But she never looked close enough

    to see the ones growing inside me.

    The monsters learned my name.

    They whispered it softly

    when I tried to sleep,

    sang lullabies of shame

    and promises of pain.

    As I grew older,

    they stopped hiding under the bed.

    They moved in —

    set up home behind my eyes,

    curled around my thoughts,

    and told me I was theirs.

    Now I make the bed every morning,

    neat corners, clean sheets,

    pretending the space beneath is empty.

    But some nights,

    I still hear breathing —

    not from the floor,

    but from within.

    And I realize

    the scariest thing about growing up

    is learning the monsters never leave.

    They just change address.

    From under the bed

    to inside your head.

  • Belonging, Measured in Time

    The hardest thing of all is to belong—

    not to a place,

    not to a person,

    but to the moment you’re standing in

    without shrinking yourself to fit it.

    Belonging asks for courage.

    It asks you to stay visible

    when hiding would be easier,

    to plant your feet

    when every instinct tells you

    to keep moving.

    It’s learning how to be here

    without apology.

    The oddest thing of all is time.

    How it slips through your fingers

    even when you’re paying attention.

    How it rushes past the moments

    you’d beg to keep

    and lingers in the ones

    you’re trying to survive.

    Time teaches you too late

    what mattered most.

    It turns now into then

    without asking permission,

    and suddenly you’re holding memories

    instead of people,

    lessons instead of chances.

    Maybe belonging and time

    are tied together—

    maybe we struggle to belong

    because we’re always afraid

    of when.

    When it will change.

    When it will end.

    When it will hurt.

    So we hover at the edges,

    half-in, half-out,

    thinking distance will protect us.

    But all it does

    is make the passing louder.

    The hardest thing of all

    is choosing to belong anyway.

    The oddest thing of all

    is realizing time never waited

    for us to decide.