Tag: recovery journey

  • One Year

    One year ago

    I put the glass down

    and it felt like

    putting down a weapon

    I had mistaken for comfort.

    I thought I was losing something.

    A ritual.

    A shield.

    A way to blur the sharp edges

    of my own mind.

    I didn’t know

    I was getting myself back.

    One year

    of raw evenings.

    Of sitting in rooms

    with nothing to soften them.

    Of learning that feelings

    don’t kill you

    even when they feel like they might.

    There were nights

    I counted minutes.

    Mornings I counted breaths.

    Days I counted reasons

    not to give in.

    No one saw

    how loud the quiet was.

    How heavy the air felt

    without the fog I used to live in.

    But I stayed.

    I stayed when cravings

    came dressed as nostalgia.

    When they whispered

    just one won’t matter.

    When they tried to rewrite history

    into something sweeter than it was.

    I remembered the truth instead.

    The shaking hands.

    The apologies.

    The pieces of myself

    I kept trading away

    for temporary silence.

    One year sober

    means I feel everything.

    The grief.

    The joy.

    The boredom.

    The beauty.

    It means my laughter

    is mine.

    My tears

    are honest.

    My mornings

    belong to me.

    I am not the wreckage

    I once was.

    I am not the hunger

    that used to run my life.

    I am a year of choosing

    clarity over chaos.

    Breath over blur.

    Staying over slipping.

    One year.

    And I am still here—

    not numbed,

    not hiding,

    not gone.

    Still here.

  • Stuck

    I’m stuck here—

    in this space between

    who I was

    and who I fought to become.

    And I’m scared.

    Not of falling apart loudly.

    Not of breaking in some obvious way.

    I’m scared of the quiet slide.

    The subtle shift.

    The old voice clearing its throat

    inside my head.

    I remember her.

    The version of me

    that didn’t care

    what burned

    as long as I felt something.

    The one who mistook chaos

    for control.

    Who called self-destruction

    freedom.

    Who wore damage

    like armor.

    I buried her.

    Or maybe I just

    outgrew her.

    But sometimes

    when I feel cornered,

    when life presses too close

    to my ribs,

    I feel her move.

    Not gone.

    Just waiting.

    I don’t want to lose control.

    I don’t want to wake up

    one morning

    recognizing the hunger

    in my own hands again.

    I worked too hard

    to soften.

    Too hard to breathe

    before reacting.

    Too hard to choose quiet

    over fire.

    Being stuck

    is better than being reckless.

    Stillness

    is better than self-sabotage.

    If this is the space

    between breaking

    and becoming—

    then I will stand here.

    Shaking.

    But standing.

    Because the fact

    that I’m afraid

    of going back

    means I already know

    I don’t belong there anymore.

  • A Chance

    You gave me a chance

    when they had already decided

    I was done.

    When my mistakes were louder

    than my effort,

    when my name came with footnotes,

    when worth felt conditional

    and temporary.

    They saw my failures

    and stopped there.

    You saw the space after—

    the trying,

    the rebuilding,

    the quiet work no one applauds.

    You didn’t flinch at my history.

    Didn’t ask me to explain

    every scar.

    You just handed me room

    to be more

    than what broke me.

    You believed in a version of me

    I was still learning how to trust.

    You treated me like someone

    becoming—

    not someone ruined.

    And maybe you’ll never know

    how much that mattered.

    How being given a chance

    can feel like oxygen

    when you’ve been holding your breath

    for years.

    You gave me a chance

    when they thought I was worthless—

    and in doing so,

    you reminded me

    I never was.