Through the Fog

Tag: love

  • 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.

  • If You Loved Me, Why’d You Leave Me

    Dear you,

    If you loved me, why’d you leave me?

    I know it isn’t fair to ask that of someone who’s gone, but the question sits in my chest like a stone. You didn’t walk out, you didn’t turn your back, you died — but all my heart can feel is that you left. And I’m still here, reaching into empty air.

    I keep replaying our last moments, the sound of your voice, the way you looked at me. I tell myself you didn’t choose this, that death came like a thief and took you without asking. But some nights, in the dark, the anger rises anyway. You loved me. You knew I still needed you. So why am I here alone?

    Everything you touched still hums with your absence. The places we went feel hollow. The air feels heavier. People tell me time will soften it, that grief fades, that love doesn’t end just because someone dies. But they don’t see me lying awake at night, whispering your name into the dark, asking the same question over and over: if you loved me, why’d you leave me?

    Maybe you didn’t have a choice. Maybe your leaving wasn’t a decision but a final surrender your body made without your permission. Maybe love can’t hold someone here when the weight gets too heavy. I tell myself that, and some days it helps. Other days it doesn’t.

    I wish you could see me now. I wish you could tell me what to do with all the pieces you left behind. I wish you could tell me how to live without you. But you can’t. So I’m left with this letter, and the silence after it.

    I still love you. I still feel you. And even though you left, I’m still here.

    Always,

    Me

  • 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.

  • Dear Mom

    Dear Mom,

    It was never your fault.

    Not the silence.

    Not the weight I carried alone.

    Not the way I learned to disappear inside myself.

    You did what you could with the tools you had.

    You held storms in your chest

    so they would not spill onto me.

    You taught me strength,

    even if it came wrapped in quiet.

    I used to wonder why you couldn’t save me

    from every shadow.

    Now I see you were fighting your own,

    and still, somehow,

    you gave me light where you could.

    Dear Mom,

    I don’t blame you.

    I don’t carry anger anymore.

    I carry understanding.

    I carry forgiveness.

    I carry you.

    It was never your fault.

    It never will be.

    Love,

    The child who finally knows

    you did the best you could.

  • 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.