Through the Fog

Tag: life

  • I Was High Then

    I was high then—

    I couldn’t face things

    the way they stood in front of me,

    bare and demanding.

    I needed the blur,

    the soft edges,

    the lie that told me

    tomorrow could wait.

    Reality was too sharp,

    asking questions I didn’t have answers for,

    holding mirrors I didn’t want to look into.

    So I floated above it,

    called it coping,

    called it freedom,

    anything but fear.

    I wasn’t chasing joy—

    I was running from myself,

    from the weight of being present

    in a life that hurt to touch.

    Now I see it clearer:

    I wasn’t weak,

    just overwhelmed.

    I didn’t want to disappear—

    I just didn’t know

    how to stay.

  • Lessons

    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.

  • Disassociate

    I leave my body without moving.

    Eyes open, but I am elsewhere.

    The room blurs, voices stretch thin,

    and I hover just above myself

    like smoke that forgot its fire.

    Disassociation feels like safety,

    but it is also loss.

    A way of surviving the unbearable

    by not being there at all.

    Time folds in strange ways.

    Minutes dissolve,

    hours vanish,

    days pass like a dream

    I can’t quite remember

    but can’t wake from either.

    I watch my hands move,

    hear my mouth speak,

    but none of it belongs to me.

    I am vaguely familiar to myself,

    a stranger inhabiting my skin.

    And yet,

    this distance once saved me.

    It kept me alive when being present

    was too dangerous, too sharp, too much.

    But now, healing asks me to stay.

    To return,

    to feel,

    to sit inside my own body

    without slipping through its seams.

    Disassociation taught me survival.

    Presence will have to teach me living.

  • Be Careful With Yourself

    There is something

    self-destructive in me,

    a part that reaches for fire

    even when I know it burns.

    It whispers when I’m tired,

    pulls at me when I’m lonely,

    tries to convince me

    that chaos is comfort

    and ruin is familiar.

    So I have to be careful.

    Gentle.

    Honest with myself

    about the places I am fragile

    and the urges that pretend

    to be escape.

    I am learning

    that awareness is protection,

    that naming the darkness

    keeps it from sneaking up on me.

    I don’t shame myself

    for the battles inside me —

    I just hold my own hands tighter,

    choose softer ways to survive,

    and remind the hurt in me

    that I’m not abandoning it

    ever again.

    Because I can be dangerous

    to myself,

    yes.

    But I can also be

    the one who saves me

    if I stay aware,

    stay gentle,

    stay here.

  • No One Determines Our Worth

    Photo Credit-Aleksey Kuprikov

    No one determines our worth—

    not the ones who doubted us,

    not the ones who left,

    not the ones who tried to shrink us

    into something quieter

    so they could feel louder.

    We are not defined

    by the people who couldn’t see us.

    We are not measured

    by the moments that broke us.

    We are not small

    just because someone else

    was afraid of our size.

    Our worth was carved into us

    long before the world decided

    to name our scars.

    It lives in our survival,

    in our softness,

    in the way we rise again

    even when the ground trembles.

    No one determines our worth—

    we do.

    We rewrite the story,

    we choose the truth,

    we decide who we are

    and who we refuse

    to ever be again.

    And if anyone tries

    to tell you otherwise,

    let them talk.

    Let them underestimate.

    Let them watch you grow

    into everything they swore

    you’d never become.

    Because here’s the secret

    they never wanted us to know:

    our worth is ours.

    Untouched.

    Unbroken.

    Undeniable.

    And we don’t need permission

    to rise.

  • Messed Up Kid

    I was just a messed-up kid

    trying to make sense of a life

    that never slowed down long enough

    for me to breathe.

    People saw the attitude,

    the anger,

    the way I shut down first

    so no one else could beat me to it.

    They didn’t see the trembling underneath—

    the part of me begging

    for someone to just stay.

    I learned early

    that love had sharp edges,

    and silence could bruise too.

    I carried secrets like stones in my pockets,

    heavy enough to drown me

    but somehow I kept walking.

    Every mistake I made

    felt like another reason to apologize

    for being alive.

    They called me trouble.

    They called me dramatic.

    They called me broken.

    But they never called me a kid

    who needed softness.

    Who needed someone to speak gently

    in a world that only knew how to shout.

    I grew up thinking chaos was normal,

    that pain was proof of living,

    that I had to earn every small piece of kindness

    by bleeding first.

    I didn’t know

    that survival doesn’t mean you’re unlovable—

    just that you had to grow thorns

    before you ever learned how to bloom.

    And yeah, maybe I was a messed-up kid.

    But I was also brave.

    I carried things I never asked for,

    held up a sky that wasn’t mine,

    and still managed to find a way

    to keep going.

    Now I look back at that version of me—

    the scared one,

    the angry one,

    the quiet one hiding behind wildfire eyes—

    and I want to tell them

    they weren’t ruined.

    They were shaped.

    Forged.

    Built out of battles

    they were never meant to fight alone.

    Maybe I was a messed-up kid,

    but I’m not that kid anymore.

    And if I am—

    if parts of them still live in me—

    I hold them gently now.

    I let them rest.

    I let them be more than their wounds.

    Because the truth is,

    I didn’t grow up wrong.

    I grew up surviving.

    And surviving

    is its own kind of strength.

  • When it Rains

    There’s got to be a break in the monotony—

    but Jesus, when it rains,

    how it pours.

    One bad day becomes three,

    and suddenly the whole week feels

    like a storm I never learned to stand in.

    I keep waiting for the clouds to part,

    for the world to give me

    just one soft moment,

    one breath that doesn’t feel borrowed.

    But life keeps dropping weight on me

    like it thinks I can’t be broken,

    like I haven’t cracked a hundred times already.

    Still, somewhere underneath the thunder,

    I hold on—

    not because I’m strong,

    but because the storm can’t last forever,

    even when it feels like it will.

    There’s got to be a break in the monotony,

    and maybe the pouring rain

    is just the sky making room

    for something better to grow.

  • These Words Are All I Have

    Photo Credit-Bas Glaap

    These words are all I have—

    the only way I know

    to bleed without breaking,

    to speak without shattering

    the pieces I’m still holding together.

    I can’t hand you my heart

    without it trembling,

    can’t show you my scars

    without feeling them reopen,

    so I write instead—

    hoping you hear the truth

    hiding between the lines.

    These words are all I have

    when my voice won’t steady,

    when the ache in my chest

    is louder than anything I could say.

    So I offer them softly,

    quiet as a confession,

    fragile as a prayer—

    hoping you’ll read them

    and understand

    that everything I feel

    is here on the page,

    because it’s the only place

    I’m not afraid

    to let it live.

  • In the Early Hours of Morning

    Photo Credit-Daniil Onischenko

    In the early hours of morning,

    when the world is barely awake

    and the sky is holding its breath,

    I find a quiet I can’t touch

    at any other time of day.

    The air feels softer then—

    like it knows my name,

    like it recognizes the weight

    I carried through the night.

    Streetlights hum their sleepy glow,

    and shadows stretch long and gentle,

    not to scare me,

    but to remind me I’m not alone.

    My thoughts move slower,

    unrushed, unjudged,

    wandering the dim edges of dawn

    where everything feels honest.

    In the early hours of morning,

    I’m not trying to be anything—

    not brave, not healed,

    not whole.

    I’m just a heartbeat

    listening to the world exhale,

    waiting for the sun

    to rise over the parts of me

    I’m still learning to love.

  • What Waits in the Quiet

    Photo Credit: Martin Adams

    It’s the presence that waits for you in the silence,

    the thing that doesn’t need eyes

    to watch you.

    It slips in when the room goes quiet,

    when the air grows still,

    when you finally think you’re alone.

    It’s patient—almost gentle—

    as it curls around the edges of your thoughts

    like frost spreading across a windowpane.

    You don’t see it.

    You feel it.

    A slow awareness that something is there,

    too close,

    too familiar.

    It rearranges your memories

    just slightly—

    enough to make you question

    what happened

    and what you think happened.

    It blurs the line between the two

    until you can’t trust the ground you’re standing on.

    It whispers in a voice

    that sounds almost like yours,

    but not quite—

    like someone learned your tone

    by listening through the walls.

    It knows the places your mind goes

    when you’re tired.

    It knows the thoughts you’re afraid to admit to yourself.

    It knows the cracks in your armor,

    the ones you swear aren’t visible.

    And it sits there,

    in the dim corners of your mind,

    waiting for the moment

    you confuse its breath for your own.

    Because that’s how it gets you—

    not with fear,

    not with violence,

    but with familiarity.

    It doesn’t need to break down the door.

    It only needs you to open it

    thinking you’re letting yourself in.