Through the Fog

Tag: family

  • For My Dad

    When I was little,

    I watched you like a storm I couldn’t predict.

    I loved you,

    but I was scared of you too—

    the tone in your voice,

    the weight of your silence,

    the way the room changed when you walked in.

    I thought love meant waiting to be noticed,

    trying to be small,

    trying to be good enough

    for the version of you

    that didn’t always show up.

    As I got older,

    the fear turned into anger

    because being scared of you hurt less

    than still wanting you to see me.

    I said I hated you,

    but I didn’t—

    I just didn’t know how to love someone

    who felt a million miles away

    even when you were right in front of me.

    And Mom always said

    we fought so much

    because we’re just alike—

    same fire, same walls,

    same stubborn need to win the argument

    instead of admit we were hurt.

    We lost years to misunderstanding.

    To pride.

    To wounds neither of us had the words to name.

    But time has a strange way

    of softening the edges we once bled on.

    Somewhere between growing up

    and growing tired of carrying old ghosts,

    I learned the truth:

    you weren’t the villain,

    you were a broken man trying to love

    in a world that never taught you how.

    And now—

    now we talk.

    Now we laugh.

    Now I can sit beside you

    without bracing for impact.

    And I’m grateful—

    not because the past didn’t hurt,

    but because we didn’t let it win.

    I don’t love you because you were perfect.

    I love you because we both changed.

    Because we both stayed long enough

    to learn each other again.

    Because I finally get to say this

    without fear, without anger, without a knot in my chest:

    I’m glad you’re still here.

    And I’m glad I am too.

  • The Comfort of My Mother

    I miss the comfort of my mother,

    the way her voice could quiet storms

    that the world never even saw coming.

    There was a time

    when her hands could fix anything—

    a scraped knee,

    a cracked heart,

    a day that felt too heavy to hold.

    Now the world presses harder,

    and I’m older,

    and she can’t protect me from it.

    But I still find myself wishing

    I could crawl back into that kind of safety—

    the kind that didn’t ask for explanations,

    that didn’t measure strength

    by how much pain you could hide.

    I miss her voice,

    the way she said my name

    like it was still small enough to save.

    I miss the comfort

    of knowing I didn’t have to carry everything.

    The weight of the world is lonely.

    And sometimes,

    all I want

    is my mother’s arms

    and a reason

    not to be brave for a little while.

  • I Wish You Were Here

    I wish you were here—

    not just in memory,

    not in dreams that vanish with the dawn,

    but here, breathing beside me.

    The nights are longer without you.

    The walls remember your laughter,

    but they don’t echo it right anymore.

    I keep reaching for a ghost

    that won’t reach back.

    Some days, I almost hear your voice,

    soft as wind against my skin,

    and I turn too quickly,

    forgetting—

    it’s just the world moving on without you.

    You should’ve seen the sunrise today.

    It broke through the clouds like hope

    pretending to be light.

    I stood there wishing

    you could’ve felt it too.

    I wish you were here—

    not because I need saving,

    but because some moments

    are too heavy to hold alone.

  • Grandparents Are the Foundation

    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.

  • For My Aunt

    For My Aunt

    I’m so grateful for you.

    You’ve always been a strong pillar in my life — steady when everything else was shifting. You’ve loved me in ways that felt like safety, like understanding, like home.

    You’ve been like a mom to me — guiding me, grounding me, reminding me who I am when I start to forget.

    Thank you for showing up, for listening without judgment, for believing in me when I couldn’t believe in myself.

    I know there were times I was hard to handle as a child. I just didn’t understand the different dynamics with you and how it could feel so much like home.

    Your strength has carried me through more storms than you’ll ever know.

    And I hope you realize that every bit of light I find along the way has a little of yours in it.

  • The Bonds That Last

    Carrying a strong bond with the people I grew up with is one of the great things in my life—but sometimes it feels like a double-edged blade. They knew me before the chaos, before the bottles, before the nights I couldn’t crawl out of. They remember a version of me I can barely picture anymore. And standing beside them, I feel the weight of who I’ve lost.

    There’s something both comforting and painful about people who’ve seen you from the beginning. They carry memories of me laughing without effort, dreaming without limits. When they look at me now, I wonder if they notice the cracks, or if they pretend not to. I can’t hide from them completely—they know too much. But I also can’t always let them all the way in, because the shame clings too tightly.

    Being with them is like touching the surface of another life, one I can’t fully step back into. The laughter still comes, but it feels borrowed. The warmth is there, but it flickers. These bonds keep me tethered, yet sometimes they also remind me how far I’ve drifted from the shore we all started on together.

    And maybe that’s why I cling to them so hard—because even when I feel like a ghost of myself, they’re proof that I was once alive. They are the mirror that shows me not just who I am, but who I used to be. And some days, that’s harder to face than the loneliness itself.