Through the Fog

Tag: joy

  • A Cold Wind’s Been Blowing Again

    A cold wind’s been blowing again.

    Not the kind that rattles the windows,

    but the kind that settles inside your bones—

    quiet, heavy, and impossible to shake.

    It shows up without warning.

    You’re fine one moment,

    and then the air shifts.

    You can feel it—the change,

    the ache, the way the past starts whispering again.

    It’s strange how memory carries its own weather.

    Lately, it’s been winter where my heart lives.

    Old ghosts drift through the halls,

    and everything feels a little too still,

    a little too empty.

    I try to convince myself it’s just the season,

    but I know better.

    Some storms come back

    just to remind you they never really left.

    I’ve learned to stop fighting the wind.

    To let it move through me,

    to let it tear down what’s brittle

    and leave behind only what’s strong enough to stay.

    Maybe that’s what healing really is—

    not the absence of the storm,

    but the quiet acceptance

    that it will always return from time to time.

    And when it does,

    I’ll wrap my arms around myself,

    take a deep breath,

    and whisper into the cold air—

    You can’t take what I’ve already learned to live without.

  • The Ocean at Dusk

    There’s something about the ocean that feels infinite.

    You can stand there for hours,

    watching the water breathe in and out,

    and still feel like you’ve barely seen it at all.

    When the sun begins to sink,

    the light turns to honey —

    soft, forgiving, alive.

    It touches the waves like a promise,

    and the horizon becomes a line between what is and what could be.

    In that hour, everything slows.

    The noise quiets,

    the thoughts settle.

    Even grief seems to pause long enough to listen.

    The ocean doesn’t demand anything from you.

    It just exists — endless, patient, vast.

    And somehow, that’s enough to remind you that you can, too.

    Watching the sun go down feels like watching hope shift form —

    it doesn’t disappear;

    it just changes colors.

    And when it finally slips beneath the water,

    you realize you’ve been holding your breath the whole time.

    The ocean is breathtaking not because it’s perfect,

    but because it reminds you of everything that still moves,

    still lives,

    still shines,

    even after the day ends.

  • When the Anchor Breaks

    My grandmother was more than family. She was a presence, a force that shaped the person I became. She had a way of anchoring me when the rest of the world felt like it was pulling me apart. She didn’t speak in grand lessons, but in small truths — truths I didn’t always listen to at the time, but that haunt me now.

    There was a steadiness in her, the kind of steadiness I never managed to carry in myself. When I close my eyes, I can still see her hands — worn, tired, but sure. They could comfort, they could scold, they could hold on when everything else slipped away.

    And now, she’s gone.

    The absence is a hollow I can’t seem to fill. People say memories should comfort you, but sometimes they feel like salt in a wound. I don’t want echoes. I want her voice. I don’t want shadows. I want her sitting across from me, reminding me that I am not as lost as I think I am.

    Grief isn’t soft. It’s not gentle. It claws at me in the quiet hours, in the moments when I think I’m fine, only to drag me back under. I tell myself she would want me to keep going, but the truth is, some days I don’t know how.

    She was the light I didn’t deserve, and now I walk in the dark without her.

    And the cruelest part?

    The world keeps spinning, while mine stopped the day she left.

  • What Does It All Mean?

    I ask it in the silence,

    in the dark hours when the world feels too heavy,

    too sharp,

    too empty.

    What does it all mean?

    The tears, the laughter,

    the fleeting joys,

    the losses that carve holes so deep

    you wonder if you’ll ever fill them again.

    Is there a reason for the war inside me?

    For the nights I drowned my own voice?

    For the moments I almost gave up,

    but didn’t?

    Maybe meaning isn’t a grand design

    etched in stone above us.

    Maybe it’s found in smaller things —

    the hand that steadies you,

    the breath you didn’t think you’d take,

    the sunrise that still arrives

    even when you don’t feel ready for it.

    What does it all mean?

    I don’t know.

    But maybe it means this:

    that even in the fog,

    we keep moving,

    we keep searching,

    we keep choosing to stay.

    And maybe the meaning is not something we find,

    but something we become.

  • What Do You Want in Life?

    It’s the kind of question that stops me in my tracks.

    What do I want in life?

    For years, I didn’t know how to answer it. I thought the right response was supposed to be about success — the career, the house, the milestones people nod approvingly at. But none of that ever felt like the full truth.

    What I want in life is simpler, and harder.

    I want peace. Not the kind that means nothing happens, but the kind that lives inside me — steady, quiet, a place I can return to no matter what storms rage around me.

    I want connection. The real kind. The kind where I can sit in silence with someone and still feel understood. Where masks fall away, where I don’t have to earn my worth to be allowed to stay.

    I want honesty with myself. To stop hiding, numbing, or pretending I don’t feel what I feel. To live without apology for being human, even when that means being messy, tender, uncertain.

    I want to create. To write words that outlast me. To turn my pain into something that might reach someone else who feels alone in theirs. To leave behind a trail of truth, however small, that someone else can follow back to themselves.

    And maybe, most of all — I want to feel alive. Not just survive my days, not just check boxes, not just endure. I want to notice. To breathe deeply. To laugh without looking over my shoulder. To belong to this life while I’m still here.

    What do I want in life?

    To heal. To write. To love.

    And to keep learning how to stay.

  • Gravity Between Hearts

    It is hard to write about the thing that binds us most without naming it.

    But sometimes the word itself feels too small, too worn, too fragile for the weight it carries.

    So instead, I’ll describe it.

    It is the quiet pull between two hearts —

    a gravity no distance can undo. You can try to resist it, build walls, bury yourself in noise, but it lingers like an invisible thread, tugging gently, reminding you that closeness exists.

    It is the warmth in silence.

    When the conversation fades, and there is no pressure to perform or entertain, the air itself feels softer. Presence becomes enough. The world outside may roar, but here, stillness is its own language.

    It is the courage to be fragile.

    To hand someone the sharp, unpolished pieces of yourself — the fears, the mistakes, the shadows — and trust they will not drop them. Trust they will not run. That is where the miracle lies, in being held not because you are flawless, but because you are whole.

    It is both fire and shelter.

    A flame that burns without consuming, giving light to the darkest corners of your being. A roof that holds steady in the storm, reminding you that even when everything shakes, there can still be safety.

    It is being seen in your entirety.

    Not just the curated version you offer the world, but the raw and unguarded self — the mess, the laughter, the tenderness, the grief. To be seen fully and not turned away is to finally believe you are enough as you are.

    It does not rescue.

    It does not erase pain, or fix the wounds you’ve carried. It will not solve the war inside you. But it sits with you in the fire. It listens when words falter. It steadies you when you forget your own strength.

    It stays.

    And in its staying, it teaches you something you cannot learn alone: that sometimes the most powerful thing in the world is not escape, not defense, not pretending to be unbreakable — but the quiet, stubborn presence of someone who chooses you, again and again, without needing to say the word.

  • Finding Strength in Sensitivity

    For most of my life, I saw my sensitivity as weakness.

    I felt too much, too quickly, too deeply. A passing comment could wound me. A goodbye could feel like abandonment. A song could unravel me for days. People told me to “toughen up,” as if shutting down was the only way to survive.

    But here’s what I’ve learned: what I thought was fragility is actually a kind of strength.

    Sensitivity means I notice what others overlook the tremor in someone’s voice, the sadness behind their smile, the way silence can say more than words. It allows me to connect, to empathize, to create. It’s the reason I can turn pain into poetry, grief into art, loneliness into words that reach someone else’s heart.

    Yes, sensitivity makes life heavier. But it also makes life richer. I feel the sting of sorrow, but I also feel the sweetness of small joys — the warmth of sunlight on my skin, the kindness of a stranger, the quiet relief of being understood.

    Strength doesn’t always look like hardness. Sometimes it looks like softness that refuses to disappear. Sensitivity isn’t about breaking — it’s about bending, carrying, absorbing, and still choosing to keep your heart open.

    If you’ve ever been told you’re “too sensitive,” I want you to hear this: sensitivity is not a flaw. It’s your power. The world doesn’t need less of it. The world needs more of it.