I want to change everything—
not out of hate for who I was,
but out of love for who
I’m finally brave enough
to become.
I’m tired of surviving days
that were meant to be lived.
Tired of shrinking myself
to fit places that never felt like home.
So I’ll start small—
a thought, a boundary, a choice.
And one by one,
the life I’ve been carrying
will learn how to let me go.
I don’t need to burn it all down.
I just need to stop building
on what was breaking me.
I used to look for myself
in other people’s hands,
measure my worth
by how tightly they held on.
But I am learning—
slowly, unevenly—
how to stay
when the room gets quiet,
how to sit with my own heart
without asking it to be smaller.
I speak to myself now
the way I once begged others to.
Gently.
With patience.
With the understanding
that healing isn’t linear
and neither am I.
I forgive the versions of me
that didn’t know better,
that chose survival over softness,
that loved fiercely
without knowing how to be safe.
I am not perfect,
but I am present.
And today,
that is enough.
I am learning to be someone
I don’t have to run from—
someone I can come home to
and rest.
Everyone you meet
has something to teach you—
even the ones who stay a moment,
even the ones who leave too soon.
Some will show you kindness,
soft as sunlight on tired skin.
Some will show you strength,
quiet and unspoken,
the kind born from surviving.
Others will show you pain—
not to break you,
but to uncover the places
you still need to heal.
Some will teach you patience,
some will teach you boundaries,
and a few rare souls
will teach you love
in a way you never knew existed.
Every person is a chapter,
every encounter a line—
and whether you keep them
or let them go,
they shape you
in ways you won’t see
until later.
Everyone you meet
has something to teach you—
and sometimes
the lesson
is simply
who you’re becoming.
I would paint the walls
with every beautiful thing I am
and every terrible thing I’ve ever been —
layered thick,
no clean lines,
no apology for the mess.
Joy smeared beside regret,
love dripping into shame,
gold pressed hard
against the bruised colors
no one likes to look at too long.
I wouldn’t fix the edges.
I wouldn’t soften the truth.
There would be laughter
caught mid-breath,
and grief so old
it’s learned how to sit quietly.
There would be nights
I survived out of spite,
and mornings
I stayed for no good reason at all.
It wouldn’t be pretty.
It would be mine.
A room that says:
this person felt deeply,
broke often,
kept going anyway.
A testament to contradictions —
light bleeding into dark,
dark refusing to erase the light.
If anyone stood there long enough,
they’d see it wasn’t destruction
I was trying to leave behind —
it was proof.
Proof that I was here.
That I contained multitudes.
That even the terrible things
never managed
to erase the beautiful ones.
I don’t know when it happened—
when the heaviness became
its own kind of home.
When the silence tasted strange
unless it carried a little ache.
Some days I wake up light,
breathing easier,
and instead of feeling grateful,
I flinch.
Like joy is a trick
and peace is just the calm
before the next collapse.
I look around for the darkness
the way other people look for keys—
worried I misplaced it,
worried its absence means
something worse is coming.
It’s messed up, I know.
But when you live in the storm long enough,
sunlight feels like danger.
Happiness feels like a costume
you’re afraid to wear too long,
in case someone rips it off
and calls you out for pretending.
I’m trying to relearn myself,
trying to believe that ease
doesn’t mean I’m slipping,
that softness isn’t a symptom,
that feeling okay
doesn’t mean something’s wrong.
But truth is—
sometimes I only feel real
when I’m hurting.
And I’m still figuring out
how to change that
without losing who I am.
Life is beautiful,
even when I don’t always see it—
even when the days blur together,
when the light feels distant,
when the weight in my chest
makes everything look dimmer
than it really is.
But beauty has a way
of slipping through the cracks—
in the sound of someone’s laughter,
in the warmth of a morning sunbeam,
in the quiet moments
I forget to appreciate
until they’re already gone.
I don’t always notice it,
don’t always feel it,
don’t always believe
the world still has softness
left for me.
But then something small happens—
a gentle word,
a familiar song,
a breath that comes easier
than the one before—
and it reminds me
that beauty doesn’t vanish,
it waits.
Life is beautiful,
even when I don’t always see it—
and maybe the seeing
will come easier
if I keep looking.
You whisper like you know me,
like you built me,
like I wouldn’t be standing here
without you holding my hand.
But listen closely—
I’m not yours anymore.
I hear you in the quiet moments,
trying to slip back into my breath,
telling me you can make it easier,
that you can take the weight off my shoulders.
But you never carried anything
except pieces of me
you stole.
You say you miss me.
I don’t doubt it.
Parasites always miss the body
they drain.
You say I was better with you—
no, I was quieter,
numb,
half-alive,
a shadow of the person
you were killing slowly.
You were never comfort.
You were a cage.
So let me be clear:
I don’t need you
to feel less.
I’m learning how to feel
and still survive.
You can whisper all you want—
but I’m done mistaking your voice
for my own.
This time,
I walk away.
This time,
I choose breath over burning,
light over lies,
life over you.
I spent the whole day in my head,
doing a little spring cleaning—
sweeping out old thoughts,
rearranging the ruins,
throwing away the versions of me
that never learned how to stay.
I dusted off memories
I swore I’d forgotten,
found feelings in corners
I thought I’d buried on purpose.
Funny how the mind keeps things—
the good, the poison, the almost-healed.
Funny how even the broken parts
fight to be remembered.
And yeah,
I’m always dreaming—
of better days,
of quieter nights,
of a life that doesn’t feel borrowed
or blurred around the edges.
Some days I clean.
Some days I collapse.
Some days I live entirely in thoughts
because reality feels too sharp to touch.
But I’m trying—
even if the progress is silent,
even if the work is invisible,
even if the only one who sees the difference
is me.
I used to wait for someone else
to tell me I was doing enough—
like pride only counted
if it came from outside of me.
But I’ve lived too many battles
nobody saw,
survived nights
no one clapped for,
and healed wounds
that never got applause.
So now, being proud
means something different.
It means I don’t need an audience
to honor my effort.
It means I can look in the mirror—
tired, messy, scarred—
and say,
“You didn’t quit.
That’s worth something.”
I’m proud of the way I keep breathing
even when it feels like drowning.
Proud of the things I had to unlearn
just to stay alive.
Proud of the softness I never let the world steal,
even when it tried.
Pride, to me,
isn’t perfection.
It’s proof.
Proof that I’m still here,
still trying,
still building a life
I don’t want to escape from.
And maybe nobody else sees it,
maybe nobody else says it—
but I do.
And that’s enough now.
That counts.
I’m proud of me.
And that’s the first voice I’m choosing to believe.
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.
Through the Fog 