When I was young,
I ran because I didn’t know how to stay.
The ball, the pavement, the open sky
they were my way of praying
without using words.
I’d play until the sun collapsed into dusk,
as if motion could soften
what love never reached.

No one noticed back then
that I was running toward feeling alive.
It was the only time
my heart beat for something
other than escape.

Those were the only memories that didn’t hurt.

And then, the other day
your voice came back to me:
“Do what makes you happy.”
So I ran again.
Not away this time,
but toward a boy I’d forgotten
the one who used to believe
freedom lived in his legs,
and hope waited just beyond
the next breathless stride.

It hit me
you were always like that.
Simple words,
but they stayed in me
long after the moment passed.

You never tried to be a savior.
You just were one.
Quietly.
Without needing credit.

Everything you gave
was laced with some kind of healing
you didn’t even realize you were offering.
Even your silences felt safe.
Even your laughter
felt like a door opening to the sun.

I think I’m just now realizing
I wasn’t only remembering how to run.
I was remembering you.

And how, even now,
it’s still your voice
pulling me back
to the parts of myself
that once felt too small to matter.

You always knew the way.
You were healing
not because you tried,
but because you lived
like love was still possible.

It never occurred to me
not once in all these years,
that surviving the storm
was a quiet miracle.

I stumbled through a childhood
built on broken glass,
each careful step
cutting deeper than the last,
innocence lost to shadows
I never invited in,
dreams replaced by whispers
that told me I couldn't win.

I was set on roads
that led straight off cliffs,
expected to fall,
expected to drift.
Yet something unseen,
a quiet, defiant flame,
kept burning within me
despite scars with no name.

I never paused to wonder
at my own stubborn light,
how in darkness so consuming
I learned to ignite,
how a voice I thought silenced
spoke courage from my chest,
turning ruin into resilience,
pain into progress.

Today I sit in quiet awe
of all I've overcome,
grateful for the battles
I didn’t know I’d won.
Though memories ache
and old wounds sometimes call,
I stand amazed
somehow, I didn’t fall.

Now here I am,
the sum of unlikely victories,
a quiet miracle
emerging from mysteries.
And finally, I honor
what I never could before:
the strength it took to survive,
and to want life even more.

Some of us are handed tangled maps,
roads inked in sorrow, street signs missing.
We grow up reading silence like scripture,
learning to smile while unraveling inside.

They say life is a journey
but what if your compass was grief?
What if the stars you followed
were the bruises you pretended not to feel?

It’s a strange kind of labor,
to unlearn the voice that whispers
you are too much, or never enough
to untie the knots in your soul
and call the frayed parts sacred.

Sometimes healing feels like forgetting
how to walk in the shoes that hurt you.
Sometimes it’s standing barefoot
in the wreckage of old beliefs,
and daring to rebuild with trembling hands.

But oh, what beauty lives in the broken
not in the cracks, but in the light that slips through them.
Not in being fixed, but in being real.

Because those who have wept
know the weight of another’s tears.
Those who have been silenced
can hear pain even when it's whispered.

You are not wrong for finding it hard
this life was not written in straight lines.
But your scars are constellations,
your wounds untranslated poetry.

And though the path is crooked,
you walk it with uncommon grace,
offering your empathy like a lantern
to those still stumbling in the dark.

There’s a part of me
that only breathes
when the world blurs
into a window view,
and the sky
feels like it’s calling me
by name.

I was made for motion
for narrow streets lined with stories,
for bridges that hum with centuries,
for foreign tongues
that sound like poetry
to a soul aching for wonder.

Adventure isn't an escape
it's a return
to the parts of me
that feel most awake.
To sip wine under French balconies,
to lose myself in the alleys of Prague,
to let Florence teach me how
to see again.

One day, I’ll go.
Not to take photos,
not to check boxes
but to feel the cobblestones beneath my feet,
to breathe in the spices of open-air markets,
to meet strangers who feel
like old friends.

I don’t want a life
that repeats.
I want one that unfolds,
city by city,
until I’m old enough
to know I’ve truly lived.

Of all the things I carry with me
the dreams outgrown,
the moments lost in time
the one that lingers most
is the wish
to have been there
on the days you needed
nothing more
than a quiet hug
to soften the world.

Not because you were hard to reach
you never were.
You were a soul
seeking stillness,
a place to unfold
without asking for permission
to just be.

It was never a mystery,
what you needed.
Never once did your heart
feel foreign to mine.
Even in silence,
I understood you.
Your presence was a kind of music
gentle, aching,
beautifully human.

And though life swept us in its tide,
though I couldn’t always stand beside you
when the thoughts raced louder
than your voice could quiet
I want you to know:
I saw you.
I felt the weight you carried.

You only wanted to feel safe
being exactly who you were.
And in every corner of me,
there’s a soft echo
of how deeply
I wanted to be
that place.

I was born knowing love as my first language,
a soul that ached when others ached,
eyes that saw through to the tender places
where we all carry our hidden wounds.

But the world taught me to close
scar upon scar of learned distance,
mask upon mask until I became
a stranger lost in my own story.

I practiced forgetting how to feel,
perfected the art of looking through people,
built walls so high I couldn't remember
what it felt like to truly see another.

Years passed like forgotten conversations,
and everything felt hollow,
connections became transactions,
love became a word I'd forgotten how to mean.

Until one day I felt something crack
in the fortress I'd built around my heart,
and through it came the voice
I had silenced so long ago

This isn't who you are.

The journey back was everything at once
terror and relief, breakdown and breakthrough.
I had to feel every emotion I'd buried,
remember every dream I'd abandoned,
forgive every way I'd betrayed myself.

But when I found him again
that boy who believed in goodness,
who saw the light hiding in everyone,
who knew that caring was courage

The world exploded back into color.

Now I understand the cruel irony:
when I silence the deepest part of me,
when I ignore what makes me most human,
everything turns to ash in my hands.

But when I honor him
this child who loves without conditions,
who feels the weight of every heart,
who believes we're all walking each other home

Every stranger becomes a story,
every conversation a chance for grace,
every moment of connection
proof that we're not alone.

I am learning to trust
the part of me that never learned
to stop believing in people,
to honor the sacred act of feeling deeply

in a world so numb.

This is who we all are,
beneath the armor:
souls desperate to be seen,
hearts longing to remember
that love is not weakness
it's the only thing that's ever been real.

I've been pondering the quiet erosion
of learning, watching knowledge fray
like ancient cloth, threads pulled
from a fabric we once wore proudly
a cloak woven by sacrifice, sewn in dreams
of equality, of freedom.
They died believing
in the sanctuary of thought,
the solemn power of a mind awakened,
chains broken by ideas sharper
than swords, heavier than gold.

Education was their quiet revolution,
a rebellion of ink against silence,
a whisper that echoed into freedom’s shout.
Knowledge, they knew, was the threat
to thrones of ignorance
a path lit brightly toward liberation,
a human right etched into
the marrow of democracy.

Yet today, I watch the lights dim
in classrooms turned battlefields
truth blurred with convenience,
minds tangled in easy deceit.
When we cease to question,
we become puppets pulled
by hidden strings, the tools
of tyrants who fear
the clarity of thought.

Books censored, voices hushed,
because a mind once expanded
cannot shrink back quietly.
They know this
those who ban ideas,
silence women,
block the path of minorities
to enlightenment’s door.

But education remains our guardian,
the quiet strength
the pulse of progress
that pushes society forward.
It gives us eyes to discern,
hands to heal,
voices to create
and hearts to understand.

I confess I wasn't always a seeker,
lost in classrooms that spoke
but never reached me.
Yet life became my greatest lesson
every book turned page,
every conversation exchanged
built a bridge to my own understanding.

Education found me beyond the walls,
gifted me clarity,
gave me purpose.
Through the prism of learning
I discovered my value
my freedom, my quiet revolution,
my awakening.