I hope one day
I can look back on this version of me
with softness,
with pride not because I endured,
but because I finally broke free.

Free from the need
to fight for my worth.
Free from the ache
of proving I deserve to be loved.

I hope one day
it’s just given.
Offered like sunlight,
like breath.
Given because I exist,
not because I performed,
not because I fought.

It exhausts me
this daily battle
between who I know I am
and what the world
makes me beg for.

I love myself.
But that doesn’t erase the ache.
That doesn’t make the nights less quiet,
or the waiting less long.

One day,
I want to look at myself
and see someone loved
without question,
without condition
not earned, not explained.
Just known.

I want to know how it feels
for love to feel like home,
not like war.

And until then,
I will keep moving forward,
even tired,
even aching,
carrying the quiet hope
that one day,
it won’t feel this hard.

That one day
will come.

The nights are the hardest.
Not because of the dark,
but because of the loneliness.
That heavy silence
that reminds you
you only have yourself.

No one is coming to knock,
to ask how you’ve been,
to remind you you’re not alone.

What good is self-love
when it can’t pull you from the edge of your thoughts,
when it can’t wrap its arms around your chest
and tell you it’s okay to feel like this?
What good is it
when it just sits there quietly
while the loneliness hums louder?

What good is it
when it can’t make you feel less alone?

I don’t know how to fix it.

Some nights,
I have no thoughts
just the ache,
just the weight.
So I imagine.
I imagine a version of myself
who doesn’t feel this way.
I try to believe I can become them.

Some nights,
I just hold my own hand
because it’s the only one reaching.
Some nights,
I tell myself to breathe
and trust that it counts for something.

The truth is,
it hurts to need yourself
more than anyone else.
And lonelier still
when even that doesn’t soothe you.

But maybe,
somewhere beneath the ache,
this is what strength looks like:
to sit in the dark
and still choose to stay.

Even when it’s hard.
Especially then.

I'm still learning
still learning what makes me happy,
what makes life feel
like more than survival.

I'm learning how to smile without apology,
how to sit with silence and not call it loneliness.

Some days,
I catch glimpses
of what could be peace:
the way sunlight spills
on kitchen tile,
the sound of leaves
chattering with the wind,
small, magnificent miracles
dressed as ordinary things.

But even then,
there’s a knife inside me
Not violent,
but present.
A slow ache,
a sharp truth
lodged deep,
like something sacred
and unbearable at once.

It doesn’t twist,
but it doesn’t leave.

Some days,
I barely feel it.
Others,
it sings through my bones.
A weight
no one else can see,
but I carry it
like breath.

And still,
I keep learning.
How to mend,
how to carry joy and pain
in the same breath.

How to look at the world,
even through tears,
and still see
something holy.

I am not finished.
I am not broken.
I am still becoming
thread by thread,
light by light,
breath by breath.

I still speak to you,
because you're that close
a part of the air between thoughts,
a presence soft as breath.

Sometimes I catch myself
smiling mid-thought,
because I know exactly
what you’d say.
And it’s perfect.
It always is.

You never needed a map
to find where I was.
You just showed up there
a quiet knowing in your eyes,
a warmth that told me
I never had to translate myself.

You were the only one
who understood
my spirals, my quiet corners,
my unspoken questions.
You met them like old friends.

I think of you
when I create,
when I overthink,
when I see something small
and beautiful
that most people would miss.

You
the one who held belief like fire,
who wore empathy like armor,
who stood rooted in her knowing
like the world couldn’t shake her.

Happy Forth of July : )

Since I was young,
I’ve lived in the in-between
a mind always wandering,
slipping beneath the surface
of ordinary moments.

I remember being very little,
winter pressing against the windows,
a decoration tapping the glass,
the snow falling soft as breath.
I would sit for hours,
just watching.
That quiet
was a world unto itself.

I could watch the sun set
and feel the whole world soften,
or trace the wind
through the leaves
like it was telling me
something only I could hear.

Time bent around those thoughts
hours, days,
evaporating like breath
on a cold window.

Even then,
I was searching,
though I didn’t know for what.

Now, the thoughts
have turned inward.
Still wandering,
but deeper now
am I growing?
Is this meaningful?
Is what I’m doing right?

And still,
it’s easy to get lost in them,
to lose time,
to drift.

These thoughts
soft as a breeze,
sometimes paralyzing,
always persistent
are my compass and my undoing.
They keep me aligned,
even when I question
every step.

They’ve become the soil
from which I know myself,
layered with doubt,
but rooted in reflection.

They’ve shown me
how I’m stitched to the world:
to the wind,
to the fading light,
to the hush
that follows deep seeing.

And when I return,
I carry more questions
not answers,
but invitations:
Am I slowing down?
Am I really seeing?

It’s not escape.
It’s return.
To wonder,
to stillness,
to the place where thinking
becomes a kind of prayer.

I search for you
in the stars,
in the shimmer between planets,
in the way moonlight
folds itself across empty sheets
like a question that never needed an answer.

I lie awake at night,
staring at the sky,
as if the constellations
might shape the contours
of a presence I once knew,
as if the hush between stars
could hold a trace of your breath.

I search in the shadows
With reverence
behind each heartbeat,
each flicker of thought,
that still hums through the bones.

You're in the pulse
of every breath,
the sacred stillness
between inhale and exhale,
a quiet echo
threading itself
through the silence.

But the absence
is its own kind of presence
a hollow that holds,
a sky that listens,
and still,
I search,
as if finding you
would not complete me,
but remind me
of who I’ve always been.

And I keep searching,
in the soft spaces
of breath and shadow,
not out of need,
but because something in the stars
still speaks in your language.