It started as nothing, just whispers in the corners of my mind, faint echoes of something I couldn’t name. A flicker in a dream, a scene I didn’t remember living but somehow I knew it was mine.

Childhood, they say, is a blur, a soft fog we pass through before it clears into the sharpness of adult memory. But what if that fog is hiding more than innocence? What if it swallows the shadows so deep, you forget they were there until they claw their way back?

I was fine, I think. Until I wasn’t.

It’s funny, isn’t it, how the mind protects you, wrapping your worst moments in a layer so thick you almost forget to question why you are the way you are— until the questions can no longer be ignored.

They return, like shards of glass in the most unsuspecting moments: The smell of rain on pavement, a song half-heard on the radio, the light filtering through a window just so. And suddenly, it’s there. Not a memory, but the ghost of one, haunting me, begging for attention.

I don’t know if it’s true— if I’m making this up, or if my brain is trying to tell me what I’ve been too scared to admit.

Isn’t it strange? How you can live years of your life, convincing yourself that nothing was wrong, until one day you’re faced with fragments, puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit but you can’t stop trying to assemble them, wondering what picture they will reveal when it’s too late to look away.

I’ve started questioning everything. Every thought, every memory, every feeling— was it real? Was it something I dreamed, or worse, something I buried so deep even I didn’t know it was there?

It clouds my judgment, like a fog rolling in, thick and heavy. I want to run, but I’m stuck, paralyzed by the weight of what I’m starting to understand.

It wasn’t nothing.

It was everything.

A nightmare that I didn’t want to be true, but here it is, staring me in the face like an old friend I’ve tried too hard to forget.

The reality is cold, colder than I imagined. It hits like a tsunami, unleashing emotions I’ve spent years running from. They come in waves, and I am drowning in them, struggling to keep my head above water as the memories I didn’t want to believe crash over me.

I am broken.

Wrecked by feelings I never asked for, by the truth I never wanted to face. But here it is, and I can’t escape. Not anymore.

There are ways to numb it, I know— the bottle, the pills, the violence. I’ve seen others drown it that way, seen them swim deeper into the darkness hoping it’ll finally swallow them whole.

But that’s not me, is it?

I don’t want to run anymore, even if facing it feels like the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Because this is my mind, my life, and I’m tired of hiding from what’s inside of me.

Isn’t it ironic?

The same mind that protected me is now forcing me to relive it all. Bittersweet, they call it— this double-edged sword of memory, cutting and sheltering in equal measure.

But isn’t that just how life is? Twisted in its kindness, brutal in its mercy?

For years, I thought I could run, hide from the ghosts that haunted the edges of my mind, pretending that nothing was wrong as long as I kept moving.

But now, as I stand here, with the waves crashing and the fog lifting, I wonder if I’ll survive the storm I’ve been running from.

I wonder if I have the strength to face what I’ve buried so deep.

Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.

Only time will tell.

But for now, I stand in the wreckage of what was, and what is, knowing that no matter how far I run, the echoes of the past will always find me.

And maybe that’s the only truth I need to face.