In that moment,
I was free.
Not healed.
Not saved.
Not suddenly made whole.
Just free.
Free from the noise
that had followed me
into every quiet room.
Free from wondering
who loved me,
who was leaving,
who I had disappointed,
and who I needed to become
to make them stay.
For once,
I wasn’t trying to survive tomorrow.
I wasn’t dragging yesterday
behind me like a body
I didn’t know how to bury.
There was only that moment.
The air in my lungs.
The ground beneath me.
My heart beating
without asking permission
from anyone else.
And maybe that’s what freedom was—
not some beautiful life
waiting on the other side
of everything I’d been through.
Maybe it was simply
forgetting to be afraid
for a little while.
Forgetting the version of me
I’d spent years apologizing for.
Forgetting every mistake
I’d carved into my own name.
I didn’t belong to my past.
I didn’t belong to my pain.
I didn’t belong to anyone
who had ever convinced me
that love meant captivity.
I belonged to myself.
God,
I had forgotten
what that felt like.
There was no grand revelation.
No choir of angels.
No sudden understanding
of why any of it happened.
I just existed.
And for once,
existing didn’t feel
like something I had to endure.
I wanted nothing.
I owed nothing.
I was chasing no one.
I was begging no one
to choose me.
I wasn’t standing at the edge
of somebody else’s life
hoping they’d make room.
I had my own.
Maybe the moment didn’t last.
Maybe freedom rarely does
when you’re still learning
how to live inside it.
Eventually,
the noise came back.
The memories.
The fear.
The questions.
Life reached for me again.
But it couldn’t take away
what I had already learned:
somewhere underneath
everything that happened to me,
there is still a woman
who belongs entirely
to herself.
I met her that day.
Only briefly.
But I know she’s there now.
And sometimes
when everything gets heavy again,
I close my eyes
and remember—
there was a moment
when nothing owned me.
Not my past.
Not my mistakes.
Not my fear.
Not another person’s love.
Nothing.
In that moment,
I was free.
Through the Fog 