I want to scream until the stars fall,
until the sky cracks under the weight of my name.
I’m tired of being calm,
tired of pretending I don’t feel the storm.
Let me burn—
let me rip the silence wide open.
Every bottled-up thought,
every swallowed scream,
every “it’s fine” I choked on—
I want it out.
Let me rage,
wild and unpretty,
until my chest stops shaking
and I can breathe again.
I thought about drinking the end,
letting it burn its way through the ache,
turning pain into silence.
But somewhere between thought and act,
a voice whispered—not yet.
A trembling sound, small but alive,
saying maybe there’s still a sunrise
I haven’t seen.
I get so tired of that voice—
the voice of reason,
always telling me there’s more to live for,
a glimmer of hope I don’t want to think about.
The world feels heavy,
pressing against my ribs,
reminding me I’m still here.
And I am—
shaking, breaking,
breathing anyway.
I don’t want to die.
I just want the pain to stop
before it swallows me whole.
You say you won’t let me down.
And I almost believe you.
Because your voice sounds steady, your words sound like safety, and for a moment I forget what disappointment feels like.
But I’ve heard those promises before — soft and certain, dripping from lips that never meant to stay. People promise things they can’t keep, not because they want to hurt you, but because they don’t know how deep the hurt already runs.
You say you won’t let me down, but life has a way of proving otherwise.
It’s not always betrayal that breaks me — sometimes it’s the quiet absence, the unanswered message, the way someone’s warmth fades without warning.
I’ve learned that love doesn’t always mean safety, and trust doesn’t always mean forever. Sometimes “I won’t let you down” just means “I’ll try, until I can’t anymore.”
And maybe that’s okay.
Maybe the point isn’t to find someone who never lets me down — maybe it’s to learn how to stand up on my own when they do.
Still, there’s a part of me that wants to believe you.
That fragile, foolish part that hopes this time is different.
That maybe when you say you won’t let me down… you mean it.
They told me boundaries were healthy,
but no one warned me they’d feel like loneliness.
That saying no could echo so loudly
inside a heart that only ever wanted to be seen.
I built fences out of survival,
not pride.
Each post hammered in with memories
of what it cost to trust the wrong hands.
Now, when someone knocks,
I hesitate.
Not because I don’t want to open the gate—
but because I still remember
how it felt to be left bleeding in the garden.
They say healing means protecting your peace,
but sometimes peace looks like distance.
Sometimes it means loving yourself enough
to walk away before the breaking starts.
So if you think I’m cold,
understand this—
I am only guarding what’s left.
And if I keep the door locked,
it’s not because I don’t care.
It’s because I finally do.
Do you drown out your sorrows
with whiskey, cocaine,
a 3:00 a.m. panic
and a prayer for change?
Do your hands shake
when the silence gets too loud,
when your heart forgets
what calm feels like?
Do you chase peace
the same way you chased the high —
desperate, trembling,
half alive, half gone?
Because I do.
Every night I beg the dark
to let me start over,
and every morning,
I wake up still burning.
Grandparents are the foundation —
the quiet strength beneath generations.
They are the hands that held the family together,
the voices that carried stories through time,
the hearts that gave love without asking for anything in return.
They teach us patience by living it.
They show us resilience not through words,
but through the way they kept going
even when life gave them reasons not to.
When I think of my grandparents,
I think of steady hands, warm kitchens,
and a kind of love that didn’t need to be spoken.
It was in the way they looked at you when you walked through the door,
in the meals they made without asking what you wanted,
in the way they remembered the small things you forgot to say.
They built a world for us —
brick by brick, sacrifice by sacrifice.
And even now, when some of them are gone,
I still feel their presence in the quiet moments.
In the smell of coffee at dawn.
In the songs that remind me of home.
In the parts of me that still believe love can last forever.
Grandparents are the foundation —
of our stories, our strength, our becoming.
And no matter how far we go,
a piece of us will always be built from them.
You stay by my side while I’m working on me.
And that means more than you’ll ever know.
Because this version of me isn’t easy to love.
I’m messy. Guarded. Sometimes distant for no reason.
I disappear into my thoughts, into the weight of everything I’m trying to fix.
And still — you stay.
You don’t rush my healing or ask me to hurry back.
You don’t fill the silence; you sit in it with me.
You remind me that love doesn’t always need words — sometimes it’s just presence, patience, quiet belief.
I know I’m not who I want to be yet.
But I’m trying.
And your staying gives me the strength to keep trying.
Because maybe that’s what real love looks like —
not rescuing someone, not fixing them,
but holding their hand while they rebuild themselves, piece by piece.
So thank you —
for seeing the good that still flickers underneath the chaos,
for standing next to someone who’s still learning how to stand on their own.
You stay by my side while I’m working on me.
And that… that’s love.
I spent years believing I was unlovable.
Not because anyone told me outright, but because life showed me in small, cruel ways — the way people left without warning, the way silence always followed honesty, the way I kept giving pieces of myself and watching them be forgotten.
I thought I was somebody nobody could love.
So I learned to disappear before anyone could confirm it.
I became the friend who laughed too loud, the lover who didn’t ask for much, the person who said “I’m fine” even when I was anything but. I built walls and called them boundaries. I called loneliness “strength.”
The truth is, I didn’t want to be loved — not really. I wanted to be seen and still chosen. I wanted someone to stay after finding out who I really was beneath the pretending. But when you spend enough time convincing yourself you’re unworthy, love starts to feel like a threat.
I thought I was somebody nobody could love.
But maybe it wasn’t love that was missing — maybe it was me.
Maybe I left myself long before anyone else did.
And now, slowly, painfully, I’m learning to return.
It was always drugs or me.
And most days, even I would’ve chosen the drugs.
They were easier to love. They didn’t need anything from me — just my time, my body, my sanity. They didn’t ask for truth, didn’t care about promises. They just made everything quiet for a while.
I used to think they made me feel alive. But really, they just made me forget that I didn’t want to be. The high wasn’t joy — it was escape. A few seconds of peace borrowed from tomorrow.
And every time I swore I’d stop, I meant it. Until I didn’t. Because the pain always came back louder, meaner, hungrier than before.
You can’t love someone who’s already halfway gone.
And I was disappearing one hit at a time — not dying fast, just fading slow.
They say recovery is choosing yourself. But no one talks about how hard it is to love the person you became in the process. The shame, the memories, the wreckage you can’t sweep clean.
It was drugs or me.
And for the longest time, I didn’t think I was worth choosing.
But maybe now — shaky, sober, surviving — maybe I’m learning that I am.
Once, she wrote a poem.
Not for love,
not for beauty,
but because the ache inside her
needed somewhere to go.
She didn’t write to be understood—
she wrote to stay alive.
Each word a pulse,
each line a breath she wasn’t sure she’d take otherwise.
The paper never judged her.
It didn’t tell her to move on
or to smile more.
It just listened
and held her pain like it mattered.
She wrote about the ghosts she carried,
the nights that wouldn’t end,
the kind of loneliness
that made her forget her own name.
And when she finished,
she didn’t feel healed—
but she felt seen.
Even if only by the page.
Now, when she looks back,
she doesn’t just see ink—
she sees survival.
She sees a girl
who refused to let silence
be the last word.
Once, she wrote a poem.
And maybe that was the moment
she began to come back to life.
Through the Fog 