I could never have imagined myself here, or the things I would go through. Not just with my health, not just the hospital stays, but everything that unraveled around me.
A big part of my world fell apart. Even though it was me who walked away, I still hate it, because I adored that person.
But as my health declined, I was forced to see things I had ignored for too long. Truths I wasn’t ready to face. And in that seeing, something shifted.
It took being broken open to understand what I truly needed.
Peace that wasn’t conditional, love that didn’t drain me, and a gentler way to exist inside my own skin.
There were days I didn’t think I’d make it. Pain became my language, silence my shelter. But somewhere in that wreckage, something began to grow. Quietly, steadily, impossibly strong.
I started to find myself again. Not the version shaped by others, but the one I buried to survive. The one who still believes in joy, in connection, in starting over.
Now, standing here, I can finally say, every heartbreak, every wound, every sleepless night brought me closer to this version of me.
The one who’s learning to breathe again, who sees beauty in the scars, and knows that sometimes, falling apart is the only way to come home to yourself.
This past year, I was breaking. Over and over again. Body, mind, and spirit unraveling all at once. Each hospital stay blurred into the next, and pain became a language I understood way too well. The world I’d built collapsed beside my health, leaving me unsure who I was without it.
Back then, the days were heavy, the nights darker still. I truly believed I might never rise again. But even in that darkness, something small within me held on. A quiet, stubborn voice that whispered, keep going.
Now, standing here, I see it all differently. Every wound served a purpose. Every breakdown carved space for growth. Every loss became an opening for peace.
I wouldn’t change a thing. Not the pain, not the fear, not my mistakes, not even the moments that nearly broke me. Because each one led me here. They stripped away what wasn’t meant to stay and left me lighter, clearer, free.
Today, I feel alive again.
Better and stronger with every day that passes. Hope now stirs softly beneath my skin. I see beauty in myself and in the world around me. And I understand now, I see it. That it all happened for a reason. Every step, even the hardest ones, brought me some kind of peace.
You spent years trying to make me small. To make me doubt what I saw, what I knew, who I was.
Before the violence, there was the addiction. The slow unraveling. The way it hollowed you out until the person I needed was barely there. If at all.
After I got sick, you used my pain to feed your need. To justify, to take, to abuse. You turned my disease into your source
And your excuse.
Too often, love became your currency. And not trusting you, became my survival.
I learned too young that even suffering could be stolen.
Then came the rage, the fear that filled every room. I learned early that love could hurt. That safety wasn’t guaranteed. That silence was the best way.
But I’m not that child anymore. The one who believed every viscous lie you whispered and screamed. The one who thought your anger was truth.
I’m becoming proud of myself now. For surviving, for unlearning, for finding peace in the spaces where your echoes used to live. I see now that what you called love, was control, wearing a familiar face.
Still, I hope your soul is changing. I hope you find your own kind of peace in the places where pain has lived too long.
I hope that you are praying.
I have forgiven you. But not for you. For me. There are no more monsters from you left in my heart. The ones you planted when I was still a child have finally gone quiet.
I am no longer afraid of you. I’ve let you go. And as I move forward, I carry no hate. Only a strange, steady love.
I used to think if I could just find the right words, the right tone, the right version of myself, maybe she’d see me. Truly hear me. And she’d stop.
But she never did. She only saw what she could use.
My illness became her ticket, my pain, her proof.
I was thirteen, and already learning that love could be a weapon. Especially with her.
I learned that love could bruise, that “no” could be dangerous, that my sudden defiance could split skin. My skin.
Silence was safer than truth. It became my survival.
I watched her rewrite every boundary until none of us were real anymore. Just ghosts she borrowed to feed her need.
Over two decades later, her body is catching up to what her spirit decided long ago.
Her heart now damaged, her skin starting to turn gray, her words sharp and slurred. Every breath another borrowed second from a life she’s burning through.
She has chosen this. She chose the lies. She chose to fade long before her body began to.
Even when she was handed a way out, a rare chance, she said no, and kept running. Straight towards the bottle, towards the pills.
And it hit me so hard my chest almost hurt. But I finally accepted it. It took me years to see it clearly. She made her choice long ago.
A choice she has always made. And that choice wasn’t me. It wasn’t us. She blamed us instead.
For over twenty-five years, she has never picked us.
Now she’s chosen to die slowly, to disappear by degrees. To keep burning herself and calling it living, calling it warmth.
I can’t save her. I can’t drag her to the surface. I’ve tried.
And I refuse to let her cruelty and darkness drag me under with her.
Never again.
I can only mourn what could’ve been. The mother I remembered before, and the mother I imagined.
Mourn the love that never learned to stay.
Letting go isn’t hate. It’s mercy. It’s survival. It’s love, rewritten in self-protection’s language.
My mother is a brutal storm I never want to survive again.
Her love isn’t what love should be. It became violent, vicious, and frightening most of the time.
I will always care. I will always love her. That will never change, despite everything.
But I don’t think I’ll ever stop grieving her and all that she’s destroyed over the years.
I had to let her go. Not out of hate, but out of self-preservation.
Because love isn’t meant to be swallowed with poison.
I deserve to live in a house, in a world, not built from someone else’s destruction.
There are days I know, without a doubt, that my dog, Milo, has kept me alive. Through pain, through illness, through the kind of darkness that makes you forget who you are.
His love is pure. Steady and uncomplicated. He doesn’t need to understand the details to know when I’m hurting. He just knows.
When I’m sick, he stays close. Not out of duty, but devotion. He lies beside me, his body pressed against mine, steady as breath. Something in that simple nearness softens everything. Most of all the ache, the fear, and the loneliness that never quite leaves.
It’s as if he knows that being here is enough. That his quiet presence speaks louder than words ever could. Sometimes he looks at me with those deep, knowing eyes, and I swear he’s saying, “I’ve got you. Rest now.”
He senses what I can’t always name, despair, sadness, pain, and meets it with love. One that asks for nothing in return. There’s no judgment in him, no hesitation. Just a calm, certain kind of love that holds me together when I start to fall apart.
He has taught me what grace truly looks like. Not grand or perfect, but loyal, patient, and real.
Because of him, I’ve learned to stay. To keep fighting. To see myself the way he does, through his eyes. With love and compassion. Instead of criticism and hate.
He helps me believe that I’m worth it. Worth that kind of love after all. And that has saved me, again and again, in more ways than I can ever repay.
There are two kinds of exhaustion. The kind that comes from living. From early mornings and late nights, from lists that never end, and days that run together. It’s the kind that a good night’s sleep can soften, that time or quiet can eventually mend.
And then there’s the other kind. The one that lives in your bones. It pulses beneath your skin, weaves itself through every nerve, and turns even rest into another form of effort. You wake tired. You breathe tired. You exist tired.
It’s not just in the body. It’s the dull ache that settles in the mind, the weight that drags at your spirit, until weariness itself becomes your constant companion. You forget what it felt like to move lightly through the world, to wake unafraid of the day.
This kind of exhaustion starts to shape you. It drapes over you like a familiar cloak. Soft but suffocating. A quiet presence that never leaves. You learn to function within it, to smile through it, to carry it as if it’s part of who you are.
And maybe, in some ways, it is. It becomes a rhythm in your breath, a language your body speaks even when your voice stays silent. You grow around it, learn to live beside it, and still, somewhere deep within, you keep a memory of lightness. Waiting for the day you might feel it again.
But even here, beneath the weight, there are moments that shimmer through. The softness of morning light, the rare steadiness of your own breath, reminding you that exhaustion is not all you are. Somewhere inside, the quiet part of you is healing, slowly remembering how to rest.
For a long time, I didn’t feel much anger toward anyone but myself. Sadness or indifference became my reflex. Feeling anything more, like grief, or especially anger felt like it could cost me everything.
Back then, my apathy wasn’t numbness by accident. It was my best option for survival. Feeling the full weight of it all, the rage of what happened and what was done would have shattered me.
And turned me into someone that is not me.
So my brain did something brilliant. It turned the volume way down. And it worked. It kept me alive.
Even now, when I know I should be angry, it still feels too big sometimes. Like it will swallow me whole. Or maybe I fear I don’t have the right to feel it. Maybe I wouldn’t know what to do with it once it’s there.
But lately, I’ve started to let anger in a little at a time. And with it has come something unexpected, more understanding, compassion and love for myself.
It’ll be a long journey, but one that will help heal me.
Because beneath it lives the part of me that always knew I deserved better. The part of me still fighting for myself.
This past year changed my brain in more ways than I can name. Not just my memory, but how I think, how I feel, how I am.
Illness did that. Hospitals, medications, the cycles of pain and healing, they rewired me. Each flare, each sleepless night, each time I was woken to be tested, poked, explained to, they left quiet imprints on the way my mind now moves.
My thoughts are slower now, as if wading through water. Short-term things slip away. The word I just said, why I walked into a room, what I meant to do next.
But the long-term stays, rooted deep like old trees that even the storm couldn’t tear down.
Still, I don’t always feel like me. It’s strange, living inside a mind that no longer feels familiar.
Sometimes I catch a flicker. A familiar rhythm. A trace of the old sharpness. And for a moment I exhale, recognizing myself again.
Then the fog returns, soft and heavy, and I lose the thread.
Once, I could trust my mind. It was quick, certain, a place I could rely on. Now I retrace my steps to remember what I was saying, write down reminders to hold what used to come so easily.
There’s grief in that. Frustration too. When focus slips, when I reach for words and they scatter like startled birds.
Some days I feel like I’m watching the person I was from far away.
But slowly, I’m learning to stop fighting it. To see that even in the fog, my mind is still working. Different, yes, but determined. Rebuilding new paths where old ones failed.
Maybe this slowing is its own kind of wisdom. Maybe this forgetting is how healing begins. By making space for what matters to stay.
My mind is different now, but it’s still mine. Still trying. Still learning new ways to bring me home to myself.
And maybe, just maybe, this version of me will grow into something stronger. More patient, more kind, more rooted in what endures.
Because even when everything else fades, there is still something in me that remembers how to begin again.
Suddenly, the only sound I can hear is my heart, pounding inside my head. Beating behind my ears, as if the world itself is echoing with me.
I fear I’m passing out. Things shift and spin around me. Fourteen, and completely panicking. I had left myself before, in small, hidden ways, but this was different. This was all of me
She is here. Angry and cruel.
Yelling, threatening and scary.
Again.
And then, time snaps for a second..
I don’t remember leaving, but I know I have. I stand beside myself now, just a few feet away. Watching her. Watching what I always called the ghost-me. She’s always existed. She must be another me that died.
The chaos, the screaming, the fear, the horrific pain, they no longer pierce me as much. They mostly belong to her. The one who suffers so I don’t have to.
She writhes. She cries out. Her face twists in agony Yet I can’t touch her, no matter how hard I try. Unable to move, I stand silent. Breathless, feeling nothing except the hollow space where I should be.
For a moment I almost envy her. She feels. She bleeds. She survives the storm.
But I, I am the shadow left behind. Weightless. Watching. Both captive and free.
And when it ends, when the world grows quiet again, she will crawl back inside me. Pressing her pain into my bones, and I will carry my ghost. Like I always do.
Before the pieces aligned, I lived suspended in the blur. Uncertain, restless, haunted by questions with no answers. Every silence felt like a weight, every unknown a storm waiting to break. I braced myself without fully knowing why, waiting for everything to fall away.
Then, all at once, the fragments that had been scattered finally came together. With that clarity, my body and mind let out the breath I had no idea they had been holding.
And in that rare stillness, I remember what it feels like to stand firm, to breathe deep, to trust that knowing, even when it hurts, is a kind of freedom.
Even when the truths are painful and heavy, past and present, I would rather have them laid bare than hidden in the shadows. Because when I know, when I hold the details in my hands, I can make sense of them. I can set each piece into place, and stand on solid ground. Instead of sinking in a quicksand of uncertainty.
Clarity does not erase the pain. But it gives me strength. It gives me a foundation to stand on. And that is enough to keep me here, unshaken, even when the darkness returns.
I know the way you are holding on. So tight. Even now, in this moment. Each and every day, you hold on. No matter what. Fingers pressed into the seams of each day. I know how hard you fight.
Often it feels like exhaustion has become a second skin. Coming from deep inside you. A part of your every cell. Every breath. Your body is heavy and your mind spins. Restless and numb all at once. A quiet, but also a loud ache.
Sadness and fear won’t win. Deep within I know this to be true. And I know you are pushing through the hours. The minutes. The seconds. Through the many betrayals of sleep. Relearning how to get up when your bones are done. When it feels like your soul has given up. Finished while the rest of you has to keep going. I know you are holding way too many silent tears. While a war wages inside of you. A battle that you hide. Quietly torturing your soul and mind.
I feel your pain. I know it and that place far too well. Where time keeps moving and the light feels far. I know how impossible it can be sometimes, to believe it could or will ever ease.
But it will. I promise.
Because there will be a moment, small or huge, that lifts your heavy heart. You’ll breathe more deeply than you have in a long time. It will catch you off guard. And you’ll tightly hold it to your heart. Then a smile will come. One that is really you. True, soulful, coming from deep within.
So hold on. Keep fighting. And when your strength runs thin, take my hand. I’ll always be there. With you, unshaken, believing, knowing, that soon your next breath will be softer than the last.
When things are too still for too long, I start to brace myself. For the moment the bottom gives way. For the familiar collapse. And it always does. It always comes.
First, a part of me crumbles with it, Before I scold myself for breaking, at all.
Again.
I can’t help but go numb. My heart starts to race, my lungs breathe shallow.
As if they too are waiting for it all to pass, for calm to return.
I wish I didn’t know. I wish I couldn’t sense it. In the way a shift in the air warns of thunder before it cracks.
But I feel it rising, every time, before it descends.
And when it hits, the weight of knowing presses down so hard I can hardly breathe.
It is not the blow alone that breaks me, but the waiting. The endless bracing. The knowing, that it’s coming.
And it always does. Always.
But each time the quiet returns, I find myself able to breathe deep once again. And pray every time for it to last as long as it can. As some part of me keeps watching the horizon. Half-living in dread, half-living in hope, always preparing for the fall.
There’s a space between the moments. Not quite here, not quite gone. A place where my breath catches, and time seems to hold its breath too.
In that space, I carry both fear and hope. A quiet tug-of-war between wanting to let go and desperately needing to keep holding on.
I’ve learned to meet myself there, not with judgment, but with patience. Like a friend who knows my silences and never hurries me to speak.
Because healing never arrives all at once. It’s small steps. Soft words I whisper to my soul, and the permission to rest when the world asks for more than I can give.
Some days, surviving means only existing. Not fixing, not striving. Just being here enough to take one more breath.
And in that breathing, I start to remember the version of me that lives beneath the weight. A spark still flickers there, quiet but certain, Growing
So I stay in that space between the moments. Holding both my brokenness and my strength. Learning that even in the waiting, peace can make a home in me.
I thought it would never let go. The weight pressed into my bones, nights stretched so long, that I forgot the sound of my own lightness.
But it didn’t stay in the way I feared. It loosened slowly, a thread here, a knot there, until one quiet morning I realized I could breathe without bracing.
I remember the blur, the endless running together, the feeling of being nowhere at all. Now, there is shape again. Not perfect. Not whole. But mine.
The colors that came back weren’t the ones I remembered. They were softer, frayed at the edges, but real enough to hold in my hands.
And though I know it will unavoidably return, I have now lived through its storm once more. This time, I carry both the memory of its weight and the proof that I can outlast it.
It didn’t arrive with an uproar, no lightning bolt, no tearful revelation. Just a quiet return, like sunlight slipping through blinds after too many gray mornings.
At first, I didn’t notice. The noise had dulled, I thought it was just a pause. Another calm before the ache.
But then, a moment held steady, a thought stayed clear. My breath didn’t catch. The fog didn’t come. And I realized, I feel like myself again. Inside my own head. Present. Real.
Not grasping, not lost. Just here.
And maybe it won’t last. Maybe this is a borrowed stillness, a gift that slips away like so many before. But I’m holding on.
With both hands. With everything I have.
Because now that I’ve tasted it again, I remember what I’ve been missing. I don’t want to forget.
Not again.
So I’ll carry this feeling tucked in the folds of my memory, pressed to my chest like a photograph. Just in case it fades. Just in case it leaves. Just in case I need to find my way back.
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.
They said it wasn’t real. That it was all in my head. A child, I felt their judgment. Their assumptions. Like none of it mattered to so many of them.
For years, most of them never acknowledged it. While the truth twisted and bled in my gut. It stole my sleep, drained my childhood, and left me in pain.
Only a kid, I blamed myself. Thought I was weak. Thought I could control it. That somehow, I would find a way. It wasn’t possible. Yet still, I kept trying. Thinking no matter what, I could push through it on my own.
And every time I couldn’t, every time it beat me, I saw myself as a failure for being unable to fix my insides.
They backed away, one by one, until few remained.
The rest stood back, acting superior, smarter, better. Always right. Dismissive of it all, including my mother.
Weren’t they the first to disappear when she became someone none of us recognized? When she wreaked havoc upon our family? On me?
I grew up watching them care more about appearances than truth. More about each other’s opinions than our struggle, our pain. So few ever reached out.
My family and I were the cracked mirror they couldn’t bear to face.
But now, now that my mother has been unraveling for years, now that alcohol stains her every word and eats away at her mind, now that time is running out, now that reality can’t be ignored or rewritten, they return.
With concerned eyes, with soft voices that try to smooth over the past.
They say they want to help. But most seem to be trying to quiet their own guilt more than anything.
Otherwise, they wouldn’t say the reckless things they say, do the things they do, or remain so cold.
They will never apologize for being so wrong. Pride and judgment still gets in the way.
It feels like they look at my family, and at me, like a story they forgot to finish.
But we are not here to be their redemption.
I see it so clearly. And I remember it all.
I’ve always known it is real. I’ve felt it for decades. At times, feeling like a knife is stuck inside me. Causing pain I could and can never fully ignore.
Their silence, Their denial, and their refusal to acknowledge the parts they played, doesn’t mean it never happened.
And now that they can’t ignore it anymore, they say they care.
Well, I see who among them is really here. Who is real, and who still wears their mask.
And I find myself grateful for those who are there. Those who have lifted me up instead of shutting me down, trying to make me feel small.
Which helps me finally start to let go. Of the weight. Of the pretending. Of the rest of them.
You keep showing up. Uninvited. Unrelenting. Dragging my old pain like chains across my chest. You whisper every mistake, every moment I wasn’t enough, as if I haven’t already bled for them.
I have survived you. Over and over. Even when I didn’t want to. Even when I thought I wouldn’t.
You don’t own me anymore. Not my thoughts, not my sleep, not the way I breathe.
I have cracked open, fallen apart, but I am still here. Even numb, even raw, I’m still here.
And if all I can do today is sit until I remember how to feel again, then that is enough.
You are the past. I’m still choosing the present. I’m still choosing to push through. Even when it hurts.
One that zooms in on the moments I’ve fallen and conveniently forgets the years I stood tall, silently holding everything together.
You talk about what I didn’t do these past eight months, but where were you when my body stopped cooperating with me?
When I was in agony?
When everything I’d relied on collapsed underneath me?
Where were you then?
And where have you been all these years?
You want credit for caring now?
Now that my struggle and pain are real to you?
Something you can no longer ignore and dismiss?
You act like my pain made me a problem, like my struggle made me someone you had to fix, analyze, and blame.
But I am not your project.
I am not your failure.
I am a person who broke, because I was breaking for so long before anyone noticed.
I gave so much
For years.
I bit my tongue.
I kept showing up when I was exhausted.
I pushed through days that felt impossible.
I carried pain, physical and emotional, in silence so you could be comfortable.
And the second I needed space to fall apart, you turned your eyes on me like I was the problem.
Why am I always the one being dissected?
Why is it always me under the microscope while your mistakes are brushed aside like dust?
Why do I feel like I’m constantly trying to defend my humanity, like I have to justify being overwhelmed?
I am not a villain because I couldn’t keep pretending I was okay.
I am not to blame for things I didn’t do. And I will no longer carry your inability to understand me as my shame.
I fell apart.
That’s what humans do sometimes. And I won’t apologize for being human anymore.
And beneath the anger… is sorrow. A deep, endless sorrow that feels like it has taken root in my bones.
Do you know what it feels like to wake up and immediately wish you hadn’t?
To lie in bed and ask yourself how you’re supposed to get through another day that feels exactly like the one before it?
Empty, heavy, unrelenting?
There are moments I’ve wanted to die.
Not because I don’t want life, but because this life, in this body, with this pain, with this constant feeling of being misunderstood blamed or discarded… feels like too much.
I didn’t choose this. I didn’t choose to be sick.
I didn’t choose to fall apart. I didn’t ask for my brain to short-circuit from pain, or for my spirit to dim from being unseen.
There are nights I’ve lain in the dark, silently begging for something, anything, to take this and me away.
Not because I’m weak.
But because I’ve been so strong for so long, no one seems to see that the strength is running out.
I needed someone to hold me. Not fix me.
Not question me.
Just hold me in the thick of it and say, “I know this is awful, and I’m not going anywhere.”
But instead, I got silence.
Distance.
Assumptions.
Judgment.
And now I feel like I’m screaming into a void where everyone has already made up their mind about me.
But this is my truth. I am grieving. I am hurting. I am not okay, but I’m still here. And maybe that should count for something.
I think I’m done. Or nearly there. I’m exhausted, by all of this, and by them. This whole thing has brought everything into focus.
I’m done taking care of everyone and everything else before myself. I’m done being told who I am, having my motives dissected, assumptions laid on me like a second skin I never asked for.
They don’t follow through. So I won’t keep moving just to hold everything together. I acted when no one else would. Took the heat when others disappeared. There is no blame. We each are who we are.
When everyone looked lost when they turned to me, I told myself, someone had to do it. I chose peace, even if it meant pieces of me broke away.
I took risks, for love, for others, for the chance of something better. And in doing so, I unraveled. I lost myself. I became no one.
But they underestimated me. Especially my strength. They labeled me, then left me behind.
So I’m walking away. From their assumptions, their definitions of me. From the box they tried to fit me in.
My trauma didn’t cause my illness, but it carved deeper wounds into the ones I already carry. And now, I’m at a loss.
But I know what I know. I feel and see things they can’t. I tried to change things, mostly alone.
And I’ve learned: True freedom sometimes means going it alone.
I don’t want to be analyzed, dissected, or explained. I’ve already been overlooked. Dismissed. Cast aside.
They acted like I had nothing to offer. And I believed them, for a while. Not anymore.
I will no longer accept someone else’s version of me, Just because they say it with confidence.
They told me I was wrong. But it was just what they wanted to believe.
and you still do. You held me when I needed it most and made me feel safe.
I’ve always looked up to you. Your strength is admirable, fierce and defiant, like a fire that refuses to be extinguished.
You protected me, not just as my big sister, but as my best friend. You saw the cracks in me before I even knew they were there. And you stood in them, shielding me from breaking.
And still, you laugh with me like we’re kids again. You sit beside my pain without trying to fix it. You just stay. And that’s more than most ever do.
You didn’t flinch when I unraveled. You never looked away from my mess. You remind me of who I am and who I was when I forgot. You taught me how to fight. not with fists, but with courage, with presence, with love that doesn’t back down.
In the darkest rooms, you were the light at the door. Not perfect, not polished, but real, and strong in a way the world doesn’t always understand.
I miss you constantly. I have for years now. You’ve been my other half, for as long as I can remember. My sister, my best friend, my mirror, and my touchstone.
Some days, I don’t know how I survive without you here.
It feels like a piece of my soul is missing.
There are moments when the silence is too loud, and I wish I could reach across the miles just to hear your laugh, to sit beside you, to feel the calm that only you bring.
We speak in glances, finish each other’s sentences, wrap entire conversations into a single raised eyebrow. Now, the phone tries to carry what it can, but it’s never enough.
I miss the small things the most. Coffee together in the morning, late-night talks in pajamas. The unspoken comfort of simply knowing you were close by.
Life keeps moving, but a part of me feels paused. Waiting for the chapter when we find our way back to the same city, the same sky, the same rhythm.
I know there will be a day when we no longer live so far apart. I hold onto that like a promise. Because if there isn’t, if this distance never closes, I don’t think my heart, nor yours, could take the weight.
Even across all this space, you’re still my home. And one day, I’ll walk through the door, you’ll be there, and it will feel like it should.
I want my time back. The mornings that didn’t begin in dread, the nights that closed softly, instead of swallowing me whole. Time that wasn’t spent negotiating with pain, or bargaining with exhaustion.
I want my health back. Not just the absence of illness, but the presence of ease. The ability to move, to breathe, to exist in my body without resentment, without fear.
I want my body back. The one I could trust, the one I didn’t have to explain, defend, or apologize for. I miss the days when I didn’t wake up attempting to measure my own limits before I even stood up.
I want my smile back. Not the tired, polite one I give the world, but the one that used to rise naturally, unprovoked, honest.
But more than anything, I want my mind back.
My clarity. My rhythm. My ability to stay with a thought long enough to follow it somewhere new. I want my focus, my memory, my peace. I miss feeling like myself inside my own head.
Lately, I feel caught in a loop of grief, numbness, anger, hope, shadowed by sadness, then grief again. Each day a copy of a day I didn’t want to begin with.
Only time will tell when this fog will lift, and if I’ll return to myself or become someone else entirely.
But this can’t continue. It’s maddening to feel this trapped. To watch life moving forward like I’ve been left behind inside a version of me I feel I was never meant to become.
I miss the way you could make me feel safe, even if those moments were rare, fleeting and didn’t last.
Even if there were more times I felt scared of you, I still miss how your arms felt around me when you hugged me as I broke beneath the weight of it all.
When the world felt too heavy you still had this ability to make it feel manageable.
You had this way that could pick me up when I fell to pieces on the ground.
In those moments it seemed you finally let that wall around you fall also.
When you stopped being cold, harsh, and scary.
When you stopped the pain by letting yourself feel mine.
There were times you made it ok for me to crumble. There were moments when you felt like home.
Like you were the only person who could see how much I was hurting.
But you also hurt me.
A lot.
Leaving too many scars to count.
And I’ve spent years trying to understand how both of those things could be true.
How both could exist.
Nightmares of you plague my sleep.
Memories I wish I could burn from my brain still swirl around in my mind.
Memories that haunt me, that I wish weren’t real.
Sometimes I wish I could forget how comforting your voice could be and those moments you held me when I was sick or scared.
Because remembering it hurts and makes the loss feel even deeper.
I needed you to protect me. To help me. I needed you to love me in a way that didn’t also break me. I needed you to choose me over the drugs, over the alcohol, over the pain.
And still, now, I don’t understand why at this moment, in this hospital, with all the fear and pain I’m feeling tonight, scared for tomorrow’s outcome. It’s suddenly you that I want to hug me, and reassure me as you did in those rare moments.
The moments I saw glimpses of the real you.
The moments you acted like a mother.
I carry both the comfort and the pain you gave me. I carry the love and the loss.
But I will not let the hurt you inflicted upon me, define me. And I will not keep breaking just to keep your memory alive as you choose to fade away.
As you choose to die.
I needed you but you weren’t there the way I needed, and not the way you should have.
My scars are all out in the open. While my soul lies dying within. A smile helps pretend that I’m coping, Yet in the morning, the birds still don’t sing.
In my mind, there are echoes still shouting. A mirage of who I once used to be. The dark thoughts leave me doubting. In the shadows… is that really me?
I’ll wander down roads for the answer, For what leaves me so broken inside.
Chasing the light, in case it’s healing. But I’ll learn in the darkness, the truth tends to hide.
In that darkness, I start to crumble. My body left a bare, empty shell. I’ll hear the drums of war begin to rumble. There, within my own personal hell.
But even in ash, there is ember, A flicker refusing to die. Though the dark tries hard to dismember, There’s strength in each tear that I cry.
The mirror may still show the shadows, But they no longer define my name. I walk through the weight of the sorrows,
I rise, and I’m never the same.
Now dawn whispers softly in my silence, The stillness is no longer my foe. From ruin, I forged my defiance. And carry a light all my own.
When I thought of leaving, I felt more relief than anything. More than sadness, anger, hurt, more than doubt. That says a lot.
It got to a point where the thought of ending it felt like freedom.
I had, and still have, so much love for who they were. For who they were in the beginning. But it got bad so fast, and also so slowly.
In hindsight, I see now the things I missed. The signs I overlooked, was blinded to, or chose to ignore for the sake of love.
In the end, I realized I had to love myself enough to walk away. I had to love myself more than them.
They were the first person who I felt truly understood me. Who tried to, every day. It felt like they knew my soul, and I knew theirs.
Our connection ran deep. We both worked to build that. At one point, it was absolutely beautiful. I thought they were it for me.
But the flaws I carried, the ones they once accepted, were turned against me. While their flaws only grew.
I tried to accept them as they changed. I tried to see the best. I acknowledged my faults, my part. But they never could acknowledge theirs.
I kept holding on to the memory of who they were. Hoping they’d return to that version. Hoping love would be enough to bring us back.
But I was the only one still reaching, still trying, still bending until I couldn’t bend anymore without breaking.
There were moments I questioned myself. Was I asking too much? Was I too sensitive? Too broken?
Too sick?
They made me feel like I was.
But deep down, something in me knew: This isn’t what love is supposed to feel like. It’s not supposed to be so lonely when you’re not alone.
I didn’t stop loving them. I just started loving myself more. Enough to see the truth. Enough to walk away without needing them to understand why.
Since then, there’s been grief. Not just for them, but for the version of me that stayed too long, that tried too hard to make something work that was already gone.
But there’s also been peace. A quiet, growing kind. The kind that doesn’t come in a rush, but settles in slowly like sunlight after a long storm.
I’m learning to trust myself again. To believe my feelings for the first time. To know that love shouldn’t require the abandonment of self.
And sometimes, I still miss what we once had. But I don’t miss who I became in trying to keep it.
I carry the love, the lessons, and the letting go.
Not as a wound, but as a reminder. Of how far I’ve come, of who I’ve chosen to be, and of the kind of love I now know and believe I deserve.
Stay away from anyone who reminds you how much they “took care of you” when you were at your lowest. Especially when your pain was never something you chose.
Love doesn’t keep score. Real care doesn’t come with receipts. If someone feels the need to remind you, what they’re really saying is: they know they didn’t show up in the way you needed. Not like you would have for them.
It’s not love. It’s not memory. It’s manipulation, a desperate attempt to convince both you and themselves that they were better than they truly were.
But once you see it for what it is, a twisted retelling of your suffering to protect their own comfort, you finally see them clearly.
Shannbud 