Through the Fog

Tag: healing journey

  • The Places I Hide

    There are places I hide

    that no one knows about—

    not rooms,

    not addresses,

    not somewhere you could find

    with a map.

    I mean the places

    inside myself.

    The quiet corners

    where I keep old heartbreaks,

    old mistakes,

    old versions of me

    that never learned

    how to let go.

    I visit them more often

    than I should.

    When the night gets long.

    When the house gets quiet.

    When a memory

    catches me off guard

    and suddenly

    I’m years behind myself again.

    That’s the thing about healing—

    people think it’s a straight road.

    It isn’t.

    It’s circling back

    to wounds you thought were closed

    and finding out

    they still know your name.

    It’s carrying ghosts

    without inviting them

    to stay.

    And some days

    I get tired.

    Tired of being strong.

    Tired of rebuilding.

    Tired of learning

    the same lessons

    in different disguises.

    But even then—

    even in the places I hide—

    there’s a part of me

    that keeps the light on.

    A stubborn little thing

    that refuses

    to abandon itself.

    And maybe that’s enough.

    Maybe healing

    isn’t about never hiding.

    Maybe it’s about

    finding your way back out

    every single time.

  • Somewhere Between Healing and Ruin

    I exist

    somewhere between healing

    and ruin—

    not fully broken,

    not fully okay,

    just carrying both versions

    of myself

    at the same time.

    One side of me

    wants peace.

    Wants quiet mornings,

    steady hands,

    a mind that doesn’t turn

    every small hurt

    into something catastrophic.

    The other side—

    the one built from survival—

    still waits for things to fall apart.

    Still flinches

    at softness.

    Still searches for exits

    in places

    that haven’t given me

    a reason to run.

    And it’s exhausting

    living like that.

    Wanting to trust life again

    while secretly expecting

    it to disappoint me.

    Wanting love

    without believing

    it stays.

    Wanting to heal

    while holding onto pain

    like it’s proof

    I survived something.

    But maybe healing

    was never meant

    to look graceful.

    Maybe it’s messy.

    Slow.

    Two steps forward

    and one memory

    pulling you backward again.

    Maybe it’s waking up

    and choosing

    to keep trying anyway.

    Even when the past

    still echoes.

    Even when the weight

    hasn’t fully lifted.

    Because ruin

    would’ve been giving up.

    And I didn’t.

    Not completely.

  • Depths

    There are parts of me no one has ever seen,

    places too deep for language,

    too fragile for light.

    I’ve buried pieces of myself there—

    names, faces,

    entire versions of who I used to be.

    Some nights, the silence rises

    like a tide around my ribs.

    It pulls me under memories

    that still know how to breathe without me.

    I’ve learned that healing

    isn’t a clean thing.

    It’s jagged,

    like glass under skin—

    you stop bleeding,

    but you never forget where it cut.

    And yet,

    somehow, in the middle of all this ache,

    something gentle still grows.

    A small, stubborn hope

    that maybe the breaking

    was never meant to destroy me—

    only to show me

    how deep I could love,

    how deeply I could feel,

    and still come back whole.

  • The War Was With Myself

    All this time,

    I thought I was fighting the world—

    the people who left,

    the ghosts that stayed,

    the weight that never lifted.

    But the truth is uglier.

    The war was with myself.

    Every battle fought in silence,

    every wound I swore didn’t hurt,

    every night I begged the mirror

    to stop reflecting back a stranger.

    I blamed the world for breaking me,

    but I was the one holding the hammer.

    I kept swinging,

    trying to make sense of the pain,

    trying to carve something worth saving

    out of the wreckage of me.

    And maybe that’s what survival really is—

    not victory,

    not peace,

    just the quiet after the fight,

    when you finally lay your weapon down

    and whisper,

    I’m still here.

  • Maybe It’s My Fault

    Maybe it’s my fault

    for not giving you

    enough attention.

    Maybe love is measured

    in minutes I missed,

    in texts I didn’t send fast enough,

    in the quiet times

    I needed for myself

    that you heard as absence.

    Maybe if I had been

    softer,

    quieter,

    smaller—

    you wouldn’t have felt

    so far away.

    I’ve turned this question

    over and over

    in my hands,

    like something sharp

    I keep choosing

    to hold.

    Because blame

    is easier to carry

    than truth.

    Truth asks harder things—

    like whether love

    should require

    my constant proving.

    Like whether care

    should feel

    like a test

    I’m always failing.

    Maybe I did miss moments.

    Maybe I wasn’t perfect.

    Maybe I couldn’t give

    everything

    you wanted.

    But love

    isn’t supposed

    to be starvation

    for one person

    and sacrifice

    for the other.

    Love should survive

    ordinary silence.

    It should breathe

    without permission.

    It should not crumble

    the moment

    I turn inward

    to find myself.

    So maybe

    it isn’t my fault

    after all.

    Maybe the truth

    is quieter

    and harder

    to accept—

    that I was trying

    to love you

    with a whole heart

    while slowly

    forgetting

    to love myself.

    And maybe healing

    begins

    the moment

    I stop asking

    what I did wrong

    and start asking

    why I believed

    I had to disappear

    to be loved.

  • Slow Erosion of Self

    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.

  • Not Forever

    I don’t want

    forever

    to come in an orange bottle.

    Don’t want my mornings

    measured in milligrams,

    my stability

    scheduled between refills,

    my future

    printed in tiny pharmacy text

    I can barely read.

    I know what they say—

    that this is help,

    that this is balance,

    that this is how I stay

    safe

    and here.

    And part of me

    is grateful.

    Because I remember

    what life felt like

    before the quiet

    was possible.

    But another part of me

    keeps whispering:

    Is this the only way?

    Will I ever stand

    without the scaffolding?

    Will healing ever mean

    freedom instead of maintenance?

    I don’t want to fight

    the people trying to help me.

    I don’t want to romanticize

    the chaos I survived.

    I just want to believe

    there is a version of living

    where my body

    knows how to be steady

    on its own.

    Where peace

    isn’t borrowed.

    Where calm

    isn’t counted.

    Where staying alive

    doesn’t feel like

    a prescription.

    Maybe forever

    isn’t the point.

    Maybe the point

    is staying

    long enough

    to grow into someone

    who has choices

    I can’t see yet.

    So for now

    I hold two truths

    at the same time—

    I don’t want this

    to be forever.

    And I still want

    to be here

    long enough

    to find out

    what isn’t.