It didn’t happen all at once.
No single moment
I could point to and say,
there—
that’s where I lost myself.
It was quieter than that.
More like water
touching stone
day after patient day,
until the edges
forgot
how to be sharp.
I started letting small things go—
opinions
that felt too heavy to defend,
dreams
that needed more space
than the room allowed,
pieces of laughter
that sounded wrong
in the wrong silence.
Nothing dramatic.
Nothing anyone would notice.
Just the slow trade
of truth for peace,
of voice for calm,
of self
for staying.
I became easy.
Agreeable.
Low-maintenance
in all the ways
that make a person
hard to find again.
And the strangest part
was how normal it felt.
How erosion
can look like love
when you’re standing
inside it.
Until one day
I reached for myself
out of habit—
and touched
only absence.
No anger.
No clear grief.
Just a quiet question
echoing through
a hollow place:
When did I disappear?
I wish I could say
this is the part
where everything returns
bright and certain.
But truth is slower.
Healing begins
not with becoming whole,
but with noticing
what’s missing.
With naming
the emptiness
instead of decorating it.
With the fragile decision
to believe
a self can be rebuilt
from fragments
no one else
thought were worth keeping.
So now
I gather pieces—
a boundary here,
a memory there,
one honest word
spoken softly
into open air.
It isn’t dramatic.
It isn’t fast.
But erosion
took time.
And maybe
returning
will too.
Through the Fog 