Through the Fog

Tag: meaning

  • Experience, Misnamed

    What made us think we were wise—

    was it the way we survived

    without stopping to ask

    what it was costing us?

    We confused endurance with understanding,

    mistook scars for proof,

    called repetition experience

    and believed pain automatically meant growth.

    We spoke with certainty

    before we learned how little we knew.

    Loved like permanence was guaranteed.

    Spent time like it couldn’t betray us.

    We thought being strong meant staying,

    that knowing better would come later,

    that consequences were lessons

    meant for someone else.

    But wisdom didn’t arrive in confidence—

    it came quietly,

    through loss,

    through regret,

    through the ache of realizing

    we would choose differently now.

    Maybe we weren’t wise.

    Maybe we were just brave enough

    to keep going

    without instructions.

  • Getting Clean

    The hardest part of getting clean

    isn’t the cravings.

    It’s the apologies.

    The ones you owe

    to people who loved you

    while you were slowly vanishing.

    The ones you owe

    to past versions of yourself

    you barely recognize anymore.

    It’s learning how to say

    “I’m sorry”

    and not expect relief in return.

    Learning how to say

    “I’m trying”

    when trust still feels fragile

    and unfinished.

    Some apologies are met with grace.

    Some are met with silence.

    Some come back years later

    in quiet moments

    when you finally understand

    the weight of what was broken.

    Getting clean means standing there—

    in the middle of what you ruined—

    with nothing to hide behind.

    Knowing regret can’t undo damage,

    it can only mean you see it now.

    And maybe the bravest apology

    isn’t words at all,

    but staying.

    Doing better.

    Letting time believe you

    before anyone else does.

  • The Weight With No Name

    It’s the shade that arrives without footsteps,

    the presence you feel before you even know it’s there.

    It slips beneath the skin,

    quiet as breath,

    cold as a truth you’ve been avoiding.

    It doesn’t shout.

    It doesn’t rush.

    It settles —

    patient, deliberate —

    like it’s claiming territory it always believed was its own.

    It blurs the edges of everything you thought you understood,

    turning familiar rooms into hollow shapes,

    turning your own thoughts into echoes

    you can’t quite trace back to their source.

    It’s the weight that bends your spine

    even when you’re standing still,

    the chill that lingers in your chest

    long after you try to shake it out.

    It doesn’t threaten.

    It doesn’t need to.

    Its power is in the quiet —

    in the way it convinces you

    that nothing outside it is real,

    that the world beyond its reach

    is fading,

    unreliable,

    distant.

    And you believe it,

    because you’ve been here before.

    Because its voice sounds

    dangerously similar

    to your own.

  • If Honesty Looks Like Madness 

    You don’t like my point of view,

    you think that I’m insane—

    because I see cracks in the surface

    you’re determined to call normal.

    I question what you’ve learned to accept.

    I feel too deeply,

    say the quiet parts out loud,

    refuse to numb myself

    just to fit the frame.

    If honesty sounds like madness,

    if sensitivity feels like a threat,

    then maybe sanity was never meant

    to be comfortable.

    I’m not broken—

    I’m just standing where the truth is louder,

    where pretending takes more energy

    than being real.

    And if that makes me hard to understand,

    so be it.

    I’d rather be misunderstood

    than mute myself into something

    that finally makes sense to you

    but costs me everything.

  • I’ve been waiting all night

    Not pacing.

    Not counting the hours.

    Just staying awake

    in that quiet way

    where hope doesn’t make noise.

    Waiting like you wait for a light to turn on

    in a room you know by heart.

    Waiting because some part of me believed

    you’d come back to this moment,

    to this breath,

    to me saying it out loud.

    I’ve been waiting all night—

    not because I had nothing else,

    but because this mattered.

  • Learning to Stay

    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.

  • The World Wouldn’t Stop Turning

    I didn’t move,

    but the world wouldn’t stop turning.

    Time kept its pace

    while I stood still inside myself,

    watching everything pass

    like I wasn’t part of it anymore.

    The sky seemed blue

    or maybe that was just my emotion

    projecting something softer

    onto a day that didn’t earn it.

    Funny how feelings can repaint reality

    and call it truth.

    I tried so hard to be cool about it,

    to play it off like nothing touched me,

    nursing a half-empty bottle

    or is it half full?

    I could never decide

    if I was losing something

    or still clinging to it.

    I drank for the pause,

    for the quiet between thoughts,

    for the moment where I didn’t have to name

    what was breaking underneath my calm.

    The world kept spinning.

    The sky kept pretending.

    And I sat there measuring my life

    in sips and seconds,

    wondering when stillness

    started feeling heavier

    than motion ever did.

  • Trying to Outrun Myself

    Every time I try to outrun myself,

    my feet lock to the floor.

    The harder I push forward,

    the heavier my body feels,

    like something inside me

    is begging to be faced

    instead of escaped.

    I picture the other side

    peace, clarity, a version of me

    that doesn’t flinch at her own thoughts.

    But the distance feels endless,

    like I was dropped in the middle of nowhere

    with no map

    and a heart already tired.

    I tell myself to move.

    Just one step.

    Just breathe.

    But my mind is louder than my legs,

    and every fear I’ve ever buried

    comes sprinting past me,

    reminding me I can’t outrun

    what knows my name.

    I’ve tried speed.

    I’ve tried numbness.

    I’ve tried pretending I’m fine

    because it looks easier

    than explaining the war inside my chest.

    Still, I stay stuck

    watching life rush by

    like I missed my cue to jump in.

    Some days it feels like

    I’ll never make it to the other side,

    like forward is a language

    I never learned how to speak.

    Like everyone else is crossing bridges

    I can’t even see.

    But maybe this stillness

    isn’t failure.

    Maybe it’s my body refusing

    to abandon itself again.

    Maybe the other side

    isn’t somewhere I run to

    maybe it’s something I build

    right here,

    piece by fragile piece.

    I don’t know how to get there yet.

    I only know I’m still here,

    still breathing,

    still wanting more than survival.

    And maybe that means

    I haven’t stopped moving at all—

    I’ve just been learning

    how to turn around

    and finally walk with myself

    instead of away.

  • 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.

  • What I’d Leave Behind

    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.