Nobody talks about
the version of you
that almost didn’t make it.
Not the dramatic kind—
not the one that leaves
a clean story behind.
I’m talking about
the quiet destruction.
The nights
you sat in your own head
too long.
The mornings
you woke up tired
of being you.
The way you kept going
not because you were strong—
but because stopping
would’ve meant facing it
all at once.
I have been
my own worst place.
My own war zone.
My own reason
for almost giving up.
And still—
I stayed.
Not gracefully.
Not beautifully.
Not in a way
anyone would applaud.
I stayed
out of stubbornness.
Out of spite.
Out of something in me
that refused
to disappear
just because it hurt.
People think survival
looks like progress.
Like healing.
Like light.
Sometimes it looks like
getting out of bed
when nothing in you
wants to exist in the day.
Sometimes it looks like
breathing
through something
you don’t even have words for.
Sometimes it looks like
not ending it
when you could have.
So no—
I’m not proud
in the way they expect.
I’m not fixed.
I’m not finished.
But I am still here.
And if that’s all
I’ve done—
then that’s everything.
Because I didn’t just survive
what happened to me.
I survived
what it did
to me.
Through the Fog 