I didn’t expect something so beautiful
to come from it all.

Not from the pain,
or the times everything inside me was breaking.
Not from the nights I couldn’t sleep,
or the moments I forgot how to hope.

But sometimes,
life plants something quietly
in the cracks left behind.

Out of nowhere,
at a time when life had sunk me so low
that I saw no way out,
I heard a voice I hadn’t heard in over two years,
but one I knew like my own.

A voice that’s known me most of my life,
and that feels like a sister.
One that, especially in that moment,
I needed more than I knew.

In an instant,
the distance melted away
as if no time had passed at all.
We laughed and talked.

We were still us.
Each weathered inside, changed.
For life had taken its toll,
but we were still the same underneath.

I suddenly felt
a certain kind of strength
I’d forgotten existed.
And that moment brought light
to a part of me
I didn’t realize had gone dark.

I hated what brought me here.
Still do sometimes.
But then I remember, I can’t hate it.
Not really.
Because it also brought us back.

And that changes the way
I see everything.

Maybe the darkest times happen
so something wonderful can.
Something that makes it worth it.

Maybe pain doesn’t cancel out joy,
it just makes us recognize it
when it arrives.

Because in life,
more often than not,
timing is everything.

I’m not healed.
Not yet.

But I’m less alone.
And now so is she.

And that, I think,
is what we both have been needing
to survive the darkness.