I am living in my agony,
not visiting it,
not passing through on the way to something better—
I’ve unpacked here.
Learned the hours.
Memorized the sound of my own breathing
when the night stretches too wide.
Pain isn’t dramatic anymore.
It doesn’t shout.
It hums.
Low and constant,
like a refrigerator in the dark—
easy to ignore until the power goes out
and you realize how loud it always was.
I wake up already tired,
already negotiating with myself
about how much truth I can afford today.
Some days I give nothing.
Some days I bleed quietly into routine
and call it productivity.
I carry my agony politely.
I hold doors.
I smile.
I ask other people how they’re doing
and mean it—
because focusing on their lives
keeps me from inventorying my own wreckage.
But it’s there.
In the pauses.
In the way I flinch at kindness
like it might ask something of me later.
In how I brace myself
even when nothing is coming.
Living in my agony means
learning the weight of unshed tears,
how they press behind the eyes,
how they settle in the chest
like a language I never learned to speak aloud.
It means knowing that healing isn’t linear—
it’s circular.
You come back to the same wounds
wearing different names,
hoping this time they recognize you
as someone who survived.
I don’t romanticize this.
There is nothing beautiful about endurance
when it costs you pieces you can’t replace.
There is nothing noble
about being strong so long
you forget what rest feels like.
And still—
I keep going.
Not because I’m brave.
Not because I believe everything will work out.
But because something stubborn in me
refuses to let the pain have the last word.
Living in my agony
doesn’t mean I’ve given up.
It means I’m honest about where I am.
It means I’m still here,
even when here hurts,
even when the only victory
is making it to the end of the day
without disappearing.
This is not a cry for saving.
It’s a statement of fact.
A line drawn in the dirt
that says:
this is where I stand,
this is what I carry,
and despite it all—
I am still breathing.
Through the Fog 