Through the Fog

Tag: authenticity

  • The Weight With No Name

    It’s the shade that arrives without footsteps,

    the presence you feel before you even know it’s there.

    It slips beneath the skin,

    quiet as breath,

    cold as a truth you’ve been avoiding.

    It doesn’t shout.

    It doesn’t rush.

    It settles —

    patient, deliberate —

    like it’s claiming territory it always believed was its own.

    It blurs the edges of everything you thought you understood,

    turning familiar rooms into hollow shapes,

    turning your own thoughts into echoes

    you can’t quite trace back to their source.

    It’s the weight that bends your spine

    even when you’re standing still,

    the chill that lingers in your chest

    long after you try to shake it out.

    It doesn’t threaten.

    It doesn’t need to.

    Its power is in the quiet —

    in the way it convinces you

    that nothing outside it is real,

    that the world beyond its reach

    is fading,

    unreliable,

    distant.

    And you believe it,

    because you’ve been here before.

    Because its voice sounds

    dangerously similar

    to your own.

  • Meeting Myself

    I met both the happiest

    and saddest versions of myself last year—

    sometimes in the same breath,

    sometimes in the same night.

    I met the one who laughed freely,

    who believed again without checking the cost,

    who felt light enough

    to imagine a future

    that didn’t scare her.

    And I met the one

    who sat on the floor too long,

    who questioned her worth in silence,

    who carried grief

    like it was part of her anatomy.

    They didn’t recognize each other at first.

    One wanted to stay.

    One wanted to disappear.

    Both were tired of pretending

    they didn’t exist.

    Last year taught me

    that joy and sorrow

    aren’t opposites—

    they’re neighbors.

    They borrow from each other,

    shape each other,

    prove we’re alive in different languages.

    I survived by learning this:

    I don’t have to choose one version

    to be real.

    I can hold them both,

    thank them both,

    and keep moving.

    Because meeting myself—

    all of me—

    was the hardest

    and most honest thing

    I’ve ever done.