Through the Fog

Tag: meaning

  • Tolls on Burnt Bridges

    The hardest part of getting clean

    are all the damn apologies—

    the ones I owe,

    the ones I can’t say,

    the ones that taste like regret

    and old habits.

    It’s paying tolls on bridges

    I’ve already burnt,

    walking back through smoke

    I started myself,

    trying to make peace with ghosts

    who remember me at my worst.

    Recovery isn’t just staying sober.

    It’s swallowing pride,

    owning the wreckage,

    and learning how to rebuild

    with hands that once only knew

    how to destroy.

    And God,

    some days it feels impossible—

    but I’m still here,

    paying the tolls,

    crossing the ashes,

    trying anyway.

  • For My Dad

    When I was little,

    I watched you like a storm I couldn’t predict.

    I loved you,

    but I was scared of you too—

    the tone in your voice,

    the weight of your silence,

    the way the room changed when you walked in.

    I thought love meant waiting to be noticed,

    trying to be small,

    trying to be good enough

    for the version of you

    that didn’t always show up.

    As I got older,

    the fear turned into anger

    because being scared of you hurt less

    than still wanting you to see me.

    I said I hated you,

    but I didn’t—

    I just didn’t know how to love someone

    who felt a million miles away

    even when you were right in front of me.

    And Mom always said

    we fought so much

    because we’re just alike—

    same fire, same walls,

    same stubborn need to win the argument

    instead of admit we were hurt.

    We lost years to misunderstanding.

    To pride.

    To wounds neither of us had the words to name.

    But time has a strange way

    of softening the edges we once bled on.

    Somewhere between growing up

    and growing tired of carrying old ghosts,

    I learned the truth:

    you weren’t the villain,

    you were a broken man trying to love

    in a world that never taught you how.

    And now—

    now we talk.

    Now we laugh.

    Now I can sit beside you

    without bracing for impact.

    And I’m grateful—

    not because the past didn’t hurt,

    but because we didn’t let it win.

    I don’t love you because you were perfect.

    I love you because we both changed.

    Because we both stayed long enough

    to learn each other again.

    Because I finally get to say this

    without fear, without anger, without a knot in my chest:

    I’m glad you’re still here.

    And I’m glad I am too.

  • Proud of Me

    I used to wait for someone else

    to tell me I was doing enough—

    like pride only counted

    if it came from outside of me.

    But I’ve lived too many battles

    nobody saw,

    survived nights

    no one clapped for,

    and healed wounds

    that never got applause.

    So now, being proud

    means something different.

    It means I don’t need an audience

    to honor my effort.

    It means I can look in the mirror—

    tired, messy, scarred—

    and say,

    “You didn’t quit.

    That’s worth something.”

    I’m proud of the way I keep breathing

    even when it feels like drowning.

    Proud of the things I had to unlearn

    just to stay alive.

    Proud of the softness I never let the world steal,

    even when it tried.

    Pride, to me,

    isn’t perfection.

    It’s proof.

    Proof that I’m still here,

    still trying,

    still building a life

    I don’t want to escape from.

    And maybe nobody else sees it,

    maybe nobody else says it—

    but I do.

    And that’s enough now.

    That counts.

    I’m proud of me.

    And that’s the first voice I’m choosing to believe.

  • I’m Thinking Again

    Photo Credit: Aron Visuals

    I think and I think and I think.

    Until the thoughts start thinking me.

    It’s like being trapped in a room with my own mind — the walls covered in questions, the air thick with everything I’ve ever done wrong. I keep trying to find the one thought that will unlock the door, the one truth that will make it all make sense. But every time I get close, the door moves.

    Thinking feels productive until it starts to hurt. Until it becomes a loop — an endless replay of memories, mistakes, what-ifs, and could-have-beens. I convince myself that if I analyze it just a little longer, I’ll figure out who I am, or why I keep ending up here. But the more I think, the less I feel. The more I search, the more lost I become.

    People say “get out of your head” like it’s easy. Like it isn’t a maze with no map.

    They don’t see the noise behind my silence — the war waged between logic and emotion, guilt and grace.

    I think and I think and I think, until my thoughts start to drown me. Until I can’t tell the difference between reflection and self-destruction.

    And maybe that’s the cruelest part — knowing that my mind is both the weapon and the wound.

  • Kerosene

    I’m throwing kerosene

    on everything I love

    because it hurts less to watch it burn

    than to wait for it to leave.

    I don’t destroy things out of anger—

    I do it because I already know the ending,

    and I’d rather be the one holding the match

    than the one left in the smoke.

    There’s a sick kind of peace

    in turning love into ash.

    No more hoping,

    no more reaching,

    no more waiting for the floor to fall out.

    I don’t trust softness.

    I don’t trust survival.

    I only trust the fire—

    it never pretends to stay.

    It just devours everything.

    So I burn it all down

    before it can ruin me,

    and the worst part is:

    the only thing that ever really turns to ash

    is me. The fire wins.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Ghost in My Own Skin

    Photo Credit “lilartsy”

    Dead with a pulse

    and softly losing control,

    I move through rooms like smoke,

    breathing but not alive,

    fading but still here,

    a ghost in my own skin

    no one notices.

    Sometimes I wonder if I even notice myself anymore.

    There’s a strange kind of comfort in invisibility—

    it saves me from the weight of pretending.

    But it’s lonely, too.

    To exist in the space between seen and unseen,

    alive and not really living.

    Maybe this is what it means to disappear

    without ever leaving.

  • Fear of Abandonment

    Some days I feel like my entire life has been one long rehearsal for people leaving me. It’s a script I know by heart—the waiting, the silence, the glance that lingers too long, the tone that shifts, the distance that grows. I see it before it even happens, and my chest tightens as though I’m already alone.

    The fear of abandonment is not just fear—it’s a shadow that sits inside me, whispering reminders of every goodbye I never asked for, every rejection that cut too deep. It tells me I am replaceable. Forgettable. That if I don’t hold on tight enough, people will vanish like smoke, and I’ll be left clutching the air where they used to be.

    I crave closeness but it terrifies me at the same time. I want to be seen, but I’m afraid of what happens once I am. I want to trust, but trust feels like handing someone the keys to burn me down. So I hover in this space between reaching out and pulling away, torn between the desperate need to be chosen and the unbearable fear that I never will be.

    When someone leaves—even if it’s not forever—it feels like proof that the voice inside was right. Proof that I am not worth staying for. It doesn’t matter if it’s just a missed call, or someone needing space—it all feels like abandonment to me. And in those moments, I can’t separate the present from the past. I’m back in every empty room, every unanswered plea, every door that closed too soon.

    Maybe this fear will always follow me. Maybe it’s stitched into who I am. But part of me wonders if it’s possible to learn how to carry it differently—to not let it consume me every time the threat of distance appears. For now, I just write. Because writing doesn’t leave me.