Through the Fog

Tag: love

  • Grandparents Are the Foundation

    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.

  • While I’m Working on Me

    Photo Credit: Aaron Burden

    You stay by my side while I’m working on me.

    And that means more than you’ll ever know.

    Because this version of me isn’t easy to love.

    I’m messy. Guarded. Sometimes distant for no reason.

    I disappear into my thoughts, into the weight of everything I’m trying to fix.

    And still — you stay.

    You don’t rush my healing or ask me to hurry back.

    You don’t fill the silence; you sit in it with me.

    You remind me that love doesn’t always need words — sometimes it’s just presence, patience, quiet belief.

    I know I’m not who I want to be yet.

    But I’m trying.

    And your staying gives me the strength to keep trying.

    Because maybe that’s what real love looks like —

    not rescuing someone, not fixing them,

    but holding their hand while they rebuild themselves, piece by piece.

    So thank you —

    for seeing the good that still flickers underneath the chaos,

    for standing next to someone who’s still learning how to stand on their own.

    You stay by my side while I’m working on me.

    And that… that’s love.

  • I Made Peace With Being Forgotten

    I spent years believing I was unlovable.

    Not because anyone told me outright, but because life showed me in small, cruel ways — the way people left without warning, the way silence always followed honesty, the way I kept giving pieces of myself and watching them be forgotten.

    I thought I was somebody nobody could love.

    So I learned to disappear before anyone could confirm it.

    I became the friend who laughed too loud, the lover who didn’t ask for much, the person who said “I’m fine” even when I was anything but. I built walls and called them boundaries. I called loneliness “strength.”

    The truth is, I didn’t want to be loved — not really. I wanted to be seen and still chosen. I wanted someone to stay after finding out who I really was beneath the pretending. But when you spend enough time convincing yourself you’re unworthy, love starts to feel like a threat.

    I thought I was somebody nobody could love.

    But maybe it wasn’t love that was missing — maybe it was me.

    Maybe I left myself long before anyone else did.

    And now, slowly, painfully, I’m learning to return.

  • For My Aunt

    For My Aunt

    I’m so grateful for you.

    You’ve always been a strong pillar in my life — steady when everything else was shifting. You’ve loved me in ways that felt like safety, like understanding, like home.

    You’ve been like a mom to me — guiding me, grounding me, reminding me who I am when I start to forget.

    Thank you for showing up, for listening without judgment, for believing in me when I couldn’t believe in myself.

    I know there were times I was hard to handle as a child. I just didn’t understand the different dynamics with you and how it could feel so much like home.

    Your strength has carried me through more storms than you’ll ever know.

    And I hope you realize that every bit of light I find along the way has a little of yours in it.

  • You Are Enough

    Sometimes I wish I could go back to when I was a kid.

    Before the world got heavy. Before I learned how to hide my feelings behind forced smiles and polite lies. Before I started measuring my worth by how much I could give, fix, or prove.

    I wish I could find that small version of me — the one who still believed love was simple, that people stayed, that being herself was enough — and tell her, you don’t have to try so hard.

    You don’t have to be perfect.

    You don’t have to make everyone proud.

    You don’t have to carry everyone else’s pain just to feel like you matter.

    Somewhere along the way, I started believing I had to earn love — that I had to perform to deserve it. But I wish someone had told me earlier that being human was enough. That just existing — messy, emotional, imperfect — was okay.

    If I could sit beside that little girl now, I’d brush the hair from her face and whisper,

    You are enough.

    You always were.

    You just forgot for a while.

    And maybe that’s what healing really is — remembering what the world made you forget.

  • 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.

  • And All I Loved, I Loved Alone

    Photo Credit: Parker Sturdivant

    There’s a strange kind of beauty in loneliness —

    not the cinematic kind where rain falls softly against the window and someone reaches for your hand,

    but the kind that aches in silence,

    where the only heartbeat you hear is your own.

    Maybe that’s always been me.

    The quiet observer. The one who feels everything too deeply and still says nothing.

    I used to think love would fix that —

    that it would fill the hollow space inside me where all the echoes live.

    But love never stayed long enough to understand the language of my silence.

    I’ve loved people, moments, dreams that dissolved before I could hold them.

    I’ve watched laughter fade into distance, and promises into static.

    They said I was guarded, hard to read, maybe even cold.

    But they never saw how fiercely I felt everything —

    how my heart broke in private,

    how I carried every loss like it still had a pulse.

    “And all I loved, I loved alone.”

    Poe said that.

    And maybe he understood what it means to love like that —

    to pour yourself into people who never notice the depth of it,

    to find beauty in the ache of solitude.

    Because love, when you’ve been hurt enough, becomes something quieter.

    It’s not fireworks — it’s endurance.

    It’s learning to sit in the dark and still care.

    To keep loving even when no one stays.

    To keep believing that maybe, just maybe, that’s enough.

    Sometimes, I think being alone doesn’t mean you’re unloved.

    It just means you’re the one who loves hardest —

    in silence,

    in absence,

    in the fog.

  • The Good That Happens

    Photo credit: Dewang Gupta

    Sometimes nothing good happens to you because you’re the good that happens to others.

    It doesn’t mean you’re forgotten or unlucky — it just means your presence is the quiet miracle in someone else’s story.

    You may never see the way your kindness changes a day, or how your words soften the edge of someone’s breaking point. You might not notice the peace you leave behind when you walk away — but it lingers, even when you don’t.

    Maybe that’s what being good really is.

    Not a reward, not recognition, but the small, unseen ways your existence steadies the world around you.

    And maybe one day, when you least expect it, something good will find you — not because you went searching, but because the world finally circles back to remind you that your light has always mattered.

  • I Just Want Someone to Save Me

    Photo Credit: lilartsy

    I just want someone to save me. Not fix me. Not offer pep talks or promises. Just drag me out of this black water before I go under for good.

    Most days I feel like I’m already halfway gone. Everyone thinks I’m functioning, but it’s all masks. I smile, I nod, I pretend I’m okay while something inside me keeps whispering, let go. I keep waiting for somebody to see through it, to reach in before it’s too late, but no one ever does.

    I don’t want a hero. I don’t want someone to tell me I’m strong. I want somebody who won’t run when I’m ugly, when I’m drunk, when I’m shaking, when I’m no longer easy to love. Someone who doesn’t leave when I mess up. Someone who proves I’m still worth fighting for even when I’m not sure I am.

    I’ve been surviving for so long it feels like a reflex. Walls instead of warmth. Silence instead of asking. And the more I do it, the more I start to believe the lie that maybe I’m not supposed to be saved. Maybe this is it — me, drowning quietly while the world keeps moving.

    Some nights I imagine just stopping. No more fighting, no more treading, just sinking until the noise fades. It scares me how much relief that thought brings. It scares me that I don’t even fight it anymore.

    I just want someone to save me, even if only for a moment, even if only to show me I’m not completely lost yet. Because I don’t know how many more nights like this I can stand.

  • The Love of a Brother

    The love of a brother is not the kind of love you see in movies. It isn’t polished, it isn’t neat. It doesn’t arrive wrapped in perfect words or grand gestures. Most of the time, it’s silent — a look, a presence, a weight beside you when you’re too tired to stand. It’s the kind of love that doesn’t ask for credit and doesn’t always get noticed until everything else falls apart.

    Growing up, I was my brother’s shadow. He was my first friend, my first rival, my first protector. We learned how to survive our childhood together — how to dodge the storms, how to laugh at the chaos, how to find scraps of joy where none should exist. There were days we fought like enemies, but there was an unspoken truth beneath every punch, every insult: no matter how bad it got, we were still on the same side.

    That’s what makes the love of a brother different. It isn’t built on words; it’s built on shared scars. He knew my secrets before I even had the language to tell them. He saw the parts of me no one else did — the soft parts, the angry parts, the broken parts. And he never turned away.

    As we got older, life pulled us in different directions. Distance grew, mistakes piled up, and the versions of ourselves we became didn’t always fit back into the memories we had. But even then, he didn’t let go. He’s been there through my darkest hours — not with speeches or solutions, but with a kind of silent, steady loyalty that makes me ache.

    There were times when I wanted to disappear completely, when I felt like everything I touched was ruined. But my brother’s love didn’t vanish. It waited. It endured the silence. It endured my anger. It endured the nights I didn’t answer his calls. And when I finally looked up, he was still there.

    The love of a brother isn’t perfect. It can be clumsy. It can be rough. It can even be painful at times — because he remembers who I used to be, and sometimes I can’t stand the reflection of that in his eyes. But it’s also the most honest love I’ve known. It survives absence. It survives mistakes. It survives the version of me that even I don’t want to keep.

    And in a life where so much has slipped through my hands, that love is proof that not everything has to be lost. That even in the fog, even in the wreckage, there are bonds strong enough to hold me together when I can’t hold myself.