I’ve always carried your name
like a shield,
a badge that said,
I am my father’s daughter.
In my eyes, you could do no wrong,
and if they ever questioned you—
your strength, your heart,
your integrity—
I would burn with anger,
a rage too big for my small hands to hold.

You were my hero, my protector,
the one who stood tall when others would fall.
I was proud, so proud to be yours,
to walk with your shadow behind me,
to know that I was blessed,
not just lucky,
but chosen,
to have a father like you,
a love that so many
would never know,
a love that others
could only dream of.

And yes, I’ve tested you—
tested your patience,
pushed your limits
like a child who didn’t know when to stop.
But you never showed it,
never let the cracks of frustration show.
You kept your calm,
even when I saw
the faint lines of exhaustion
creeping into your eyes.

I know,
I’ve disappointed you.
You don’t say it,
but I feel it
in the silence,
in the moments when I tried so hard,
but it wasn’t enough.
Your complaints about
the things I left undone,
the duties unfinished,
the expectations unmet.

You expected more from me,
and I wanted to give it,
wanted to be that perfect daughter
you could hold up to the world
and say,
"She’s mine. Look at what she’s become."
But sometimes,
my best wasn’t enough,
and I could see the flicker of frustration
in your eyes,
hear it in the tone of your voice,
even when you didn’t mean to.

I know you didn’t mean to.

Still, I love you.
Even when your words
cut deeper than you intended,
when they left marks
that no one could see,
I loved you,
and I love you still.
When you pointed at the mistakes,
not the progress,
I loved you.
When you told me
what I could have done better
instead of what I did right,
I loved you.

Every harsh word
was another scar,
but still,
my heart clung to you
with every bit of its strength.
Even when the weight of disappointment
became too heavy to carry,
I bore it,
because you were my father,
and in spite of all that,
I loved you still.

It hurt, sometimes more than I could say.
Your frustration,
your anger,
it dug deep,
carved out places in me
I didn’t know existed.
Places where I held my breath,
waiting for your approval,
only to be met with silence
or a reminder
of what I still hadn’t done.

But still, I love you.
I always have.

I don’t blame you
for the way I struggle now,
for the way I sometimes feel distant,
cut off from the world,
unable to connect the way others do.
I don’t hold you responsible
for the way I’ve learned
to hide my feelings,
to bury them deep
so no one can see.

It wasn’t your fault.
It never was.

You gave me what you knew,
what you could,
and I took it,
even when it left me wondering
if I was enough.

But you were always enough for me.
Even in your imperfections,
you were perfect in my eyes.
I never needed you to be more
than what you were—
my father,
the one who loved me,
even when it felt
like your love was buried
beneath layers of expectations.

I know you blame yourself sometimes.
I can see it in the way
you look at me,
like you wonder
if you’ve done right by me,
if you gave enough,
loved enough,
protected enough.

But you did.

Even when your words
made me feel small,
even when I doubted myself
because I thought
I could never reach the bar
you set so high,
I knew,
deep down,
that you loved me.

And still,
I love you.

You are my knight,
my protector,
my shield against the world’s harshness.
You are the reason I push myself,
the reason I strive to be more,
to be better,
because I wanted to make you proud.

I know I’ve failed sometimes.
I know I’ve fallen short
of what you hoped for me.
But I’m still here,
and I’m still yours,
and I still love you,
more than I could ever say.

You are not perfect,
but you were perfect for me.
And I don’t blame you,
not for the parts of me
that feel broken,
not for the parts of me
that struggle to feel.

You did your best,
and that’s all I ever needed.

I love you,
always have,
always will.

Because in my eyes,
you are still the hero,
the father,
the man I looked up to
when I was small
and didn’t know what the world could do.

You are still my role model,
my protector,
my guide through the storms.
And no matter how hard it gets,
no matter what words have passed
between us,
I will always be your daughter,
and you will always be my father.

I just hope you know
that even when it hurt,
even when the scars you left
ran deeper than you meant them to,
I loved you,
and I always will.

Because in the end,
that’s what matters.
Not the pain,
not the mistakes,
but the love
that has always been there,
the love you gave,
the love I hold
even when it’s hard to feel.

I love you,
nonetheless.

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.

I never thought I’d find it—
love, that thing people talk about,
like it’s the air they breathe,
as essential, as invisible,
but heavier,
a whisper on some days
and a roar on others.

I’ve always been in love
with the idea of love,
the way it’s supposed to
fill you with butterflies,
turn your cheeks pink,
make you feel foolish,
blind and reckless,
like you’re walking on air
but somehow ready to fall.

Or maybe it’s that quiet kind,
that steady hand
that presses lightly on your back
and tells you,
in the calmest voice,
“You’re safe. You’re never alone.”
It’s tender, peaceful,
silent but powerful,
like the moon pulling at the tides.

And sometimes, I wonder
if I’ll ever know either kind.
Because I’ve felt it,
that flutter,
that warm blush creeping up my neck,
that sense of calm, too—
a peace I didn’t know
I could crave.
But I’ve never really
fallen, not in the way
they write songs about,
because I know what love can do.
It can change you,
twist you,
leave you in pieces
you don’t know how to gather.

I’m scared,
scared of what love asks for,
the way it demands
your trust,
your hope,
your heart,
your dreams,
and the risk that someone
could break every part of you,
unravel you slowly,
or all at once,
without even meaning to.

And I think of myself,
how flawed I am,
how I push people away
just before they get close,
because I know
I’d ruin it,
or worse—
ruin them.
I see the way I shut down,
the way I can’t communicate,
how I sabotage what could be
something beautiful
before it even has a chance to bloom.

I know I’m not good
for anyone,
not when I can’t give up
the habits that keep me
safe—
because really,
I’m terrified.
Terrified of the giving,
the trusting,
the baring of souls,
and the weight
of holding someone else’s heart
in my hands,
the power
to break them
without even knowing it.

It’s a power
I don’t want,
a power that could ****,
not just me,
but them—
the ones brave enough
to love me,
or anyone else.

But when I see others,
those who have found it,
found love in all its forms—
the wild, the quiet,
the tender, the bold—
I don’t envy them.
I stand in awe.
I marvel at their courage,
the way they hand over
something so fragile
yet strong in its own right
to another person
completely.

It’s love,
in all its terror and beauty.
It’s the thing
that can change us,
scar us,
heal us,
make us feel alive
or break us down to nothing.
It’s more than a feeling,
more than an emotion—
it’s something greater,
something I don’t know
if I’ll ever hold
or even deserve.

But I know this:
I’m happy for those who do.

I’ve lived in a dark I can’t explain,
a space thick with silence, yet deafening—
a strange storm of stillness where I felt both
nothing and everything
all at once.

Days and nights blended like spilled ink,
no lines to divide, no edges to hold onto,
just a haze, like waking from a dream
that’s already slipping away,
fading into something forgotten,
or maybe it was never there.

There were moments I questioned my own hands,
the shape of my own face in the mirror—
did I know it, truly?
I doubted even the walls around me,
if they were real or just pieces
of some vast, unsolvable dream.

I watched my life as if from outside,
a spectator in my own skin,
my laughter hollow, echoing back with no weight,
no warmth, just a habit of sound.
Every word I spoke felt like a stranger’s,
every look exchanged like some cruel joke.

And in that numbness,
I became an absence, a shadow
moving through routines that held no tether,
no thread pulling me forward,
no anchor keeping me still.

It was as if something precious had been stolen,
something essential, though I never knew what—
a piece of me lost in the dark,
slipped from my fingers without me noticing.
And I started to believe,
that maybe this was it,
the shape of my life from now on,
a hollow sound, an empty shell
I’d grow used to wearing.

Months passed—
gray as rain, silent as snowfall.
Dreams twisted into nightmares,
but they left no trace, no memory,
just a feeling that lingered like smoke,
heavy in my lungs, lingering
long after I’d forgotten the flame.

But then, one night, like a whisper,
a voice soft and warm slipped through,
familiar yet foreign, gentle as rain,
washing over me in a way I’d forgotten,
reminding me what it felt like
to be touched by something real.

It was quiet, like the first light of dawn,
a mere shimmer breaking the edge of dark,
but it was there, clear and calm—
the sound of something that was mine.

For the first time in so long,
I felt it,
a sliver of warmth, a flicker of life,
as if I’d stumbled into something hidden,
waiting all this time, buried deep
beneath the weight of doubt.

My world shifted, almost imperceptibly,
but enough that I could feel it,
a change, like the start of breath
in a room that’s been silent for too long.

But I wondered—
was I even worthy of this light?
Did I have the courage
to seek out what was stolen?
Or would I hide,
cling to the comfort of dark
I’d come to know so well?

I wasn’t sure.
Not yet.

But I felt it—the pull, the invitation
to step forward, to let go of the shadows
one cautious inch at a time.
It was hard, harder than I ever imagined,
this first step into the unknown,
but it was mine, and I knew it.

Now, I’m learning to trust the whispers,
the soft, persistent glimmer
that breaks through the dark.
I don’t know where it leads,
or if I’ll ever find what I lost—
but there’s a hope now, fragile but fierce,
an ache that says maybe I can be whole again,
that I’m not too late.

Maybe, just maybe,
I’ll grow into the light I once forgot,
and one day, with a quiet certainty,
I’ll say I am free,
that I have been saved,
and this darkness was only
the beginning of something new.

I carried shadows, dense as night,
through hollow streets of quiet pain.
No light, no shape, no depth or day,
just a blank and endless ache.
I drifted—lost in the gray,
tired of hope, sick of longing,
too weary to wish for another way.

In my hands, the weight of years—
every fault, every tear—
held tight, till it became a part of me,
a second skin, a burdened heart.
I thought this was life:
a slow fade,
an unmarked grave.

But today, something called,
soft as dawn, sharp as truth.
A small voice—maybe my own—
whispered of more, dared to say:
You don’t have to stay here.
And for once, I listened,
leaned in close.

With trembling hands, I reached for light,
not knowing if I’d deserve its warmth.
The step was heavy, a mountain move,
but still I took it,
trusting in things unseen,
in a love I hadn’t earned,
a grace I’d long denied.

It feels like a freefall, yet grounded,
like stepping into air but finding earth,
and I wonder:
can I be loved like this,
found whole from broken parts?
Can I let go, hands wide open,
of the burdens I made my own?

I’m afraid, but somehow, that’s fine—
I am carried, lifted high,
by a strength not mine.
And it terrifies me, this boundless peace,
the way my soul begins to breathe,
feeling lighter, every layer shed,
every shadow given up and left behind.

So I walk on, step by step,
into this unknown brightness.
It’s hard—yes, harder than I’d dreamed,
and I stumble, thinking of turning back.
But even as the doubts rise,
I know this is my path,
a promise kept, a fire fed.

Here, in the light, I’ll stand—
fragile, unsure, but free.
And maybe I’ll waver, lose my way,
but I’ll remember the warmth,
the voice that called, the step I took,
and I’ll find my way back.
No burden, no shame, only grace.

I walk to be held, to be known,
to a love that claims me whole,
and though I once felt undeserving,
I know now—
I am wanted, seen, saved.
Today, I chose to live.

For years,
I’ve stared into myself, tried to name the shadows that linger there.
Each flaw, each crack in my surface,
the places where I come undone, unravel quietly
like threads pulled from a fragile seam.
I know I am kind—
to others.
I know I am compassionate—
when they need it most.
But to myself?
I’m unsure, disconnected, unable to reach the core of who I am
or maybe who I once was.

I’ve searched for answers in the endless mirrors of introspection,
taken tests, quizzes, anything that might help me
hold a fragment of truth,
to say:
“This is me, all of me.”
But every answer slips away before I can grasp it,
just out of reach,
like trying to catch mist in my hands.

There are parts of me I’ve always kept locked away,
unspoken, unseen.
I’ve tried to name them,
but the words stick in my throat,
cowardly whispers that never see the light of day.
And still, they linger,
those pieces of myself I refuse to admit.
The good and the bad,
all tangled together in a knot I cannot untie.

For years, I’ve felt hollow.
That ache, it’s always been there,
but I kept it hidden, tucked away in the quiet corners of my heart.
I told myself I could manage it,
that it wasn’t real,
that I was strong enough to keep it at bay.
But it’s grown, festering,
deeper and more painful as the days passed.
And now,
it’s something I can no longer ignore.

I tried to fight it, I did.
I wrote poems, let my words bleed onto the page,
hoping they’d carry the weight of it away.
But they never did.
The ache lingered,
etched into every line, every verse,
seen by those who could truly see,
those who chose to ignore,
and even those who pretended not to notice.
It’s become part of me, woven into my thoughts,
my touch, my very being.
Now it’s everywhere,
crawling into the spaces between me and the world,
and I know—
they see it too.

What I thought I could hide,
what I thought no one would ever see,
is now clear as day,
glaring like an open wound.
This hollow ache,
the thing that gnaws at me,
it’s no longer just mine.
It has spilled into my reality,
into the lives of everyone around me.
They feel it, even if they don’t know what it is.
Or maybe they do.
Maybe they’ve always known.

I’ve tried to name it,
tried to resist it,
but now I finally see it for what it is.
This emptiness, this ache that has followed me for years,
it’s a plague.
A plague that’s swallowed my generation whole,
that’s consumed my friends, my family,
left them hollow, just like me.
I never thought I’d be one of them.
I never thought it would take me too.
But here I am,
succumbing to it,
unwillingly so,
yet powerless to stop it.

And it hurts.
It hurts more than I can put into words,
more than anyone could ever understand.
I cry for what I’ve lost,
for what I can never seem to find—
that sense of wholeness, of being alive.
I ache for it,
but it slips further away with each passing day.

Still,
I can’t give in,
not completely.
As much as I want to rest,
as much as I want to close my eyes and let the ache consume me,
I can’t.
There’s too much left to do,
too many people I love,
too much life left to live.
And I know, somewhere deep down,
there has to be hope.
There has to be.
Even if it feels like a lie,
even if it feels like I’ll never feel whole again,
I have to believe—
maybe one day, I’ll feel alive.

But even as I say it,
I wonder if I’m lying to myself,
to everyone around me.
Because the truth is,
I’ve already succumbed.
I succumbed a long time ago.
I’ve just been biding my time,
waiting for it to take everything.
And now,
it’s almost done.

It began so quietly,
a shift I didn’t see coming—
like the way a shadow spreads,
slow and unnoticed
until you’re swallowed whole.
At first, it was just a haze,
days that felt like they were wrapped in gauze,
everything softer, muffled,
as if the world had taken a step back
and left me behind,
adrift in some forgotten space.

I’d look at my hands
and not recognize them.
Fingers, palms—alien,
like they belonged to someone else,
someone living through me,
someone borrowing my skin
and leaving me watching
from a place I couldn’t touch.
It was almost peaceful, at first,
the way nothing felt real,
like floating just above the surface
of my own life.

But then,
the edges started to fray.
People spoke to me,
and their words were colors,
shapes that didn’t make sense,
sounds too sharp, too bright,
cutting through the blur
in a way that made my bones ache.
I answered them,
I think,
but my voice felt wrong,
like it was coming from miles away,
and the words weren’t mine
but borrowed from some script
I didn’t remember learning.

I tried to shake it off,
to blink hard and clear the fog,
but the more I fought it,
the thicker it became—
like trying to wake from a dream
only to realize
the dream was waking,
and I was sinking deeper
into something I couldn’t escape.

There were moments,
fleeting and sharp,
when I’d catch my reflection
and feel a flicker of panic—
Who is she?
Who is this girl staring back at me
with hollow eyes and a face
that doesn’t feel like mine?
I’d touch my cheek,
trace the curve of my jaw,
but it was like touching someone else’s skin,
someone else's life,
and I was just a ghost
haunting the body they left behind.

The world grew distant,
not just in sight,
but in sound, in touch.
I’d brush past someone,
feel the warmth of their body,
but it didn’t reach me.
Their laughter, their voices—
they were echoes in a cave
I didn’t belong to anymore.
I smiled,
I laughed when it seemed right,
but it was all reflex,
a mask of normalcy
slipping over the hollow of my chest.

Days turned into nights,
and time became a blur,
a smeared painting of hours and minutes
that I couldn’t keep track of.
I’d lose myself in the spaces between seconds,
forgetting how I got from one room to the next,
forgetting if I’d even moved at all.
Was it Monday?
Thursday?
What did it matter?
It was all the same grey expanse,
a world I could see but not touch,
not feel.

And then there were the dreams,
the ones that felt more real
than my waking moments.
I’d dream of being awake,
of living my life,
only to wake up
and feel the crushing weight
of knowing that none of it
was real.
But the dream?
The dream felt more vivid,
more alive than anything I had
when I opened my eyes.
I began to wonder
if I was living in reverse,
if the moments of sleep
were where I truly belonged,
and waking was just the afterthought,
the shadow of a life
I wasn’t meant to claim.

I couldn’t tell anyone.
How could I explain
this slow unraveling?
How do you say
“I don’t feel real anymore”
without sounding insane?
So I stayed silent,
wrapped in the quiet dread
that clung to my skin like a second layer,
a film I couldn’t scrub off.

But inside,
something began to scream,
a low, distant wail
that built with each passing day.
The panic bubbled beneath my ribs,
tightening, squeezing,
as if the air was thinning
and my lungs forgot how to breathe.
I was trapped,
caught in a loop
of watching myself disappear
and being powerless to stop it.

And one day,
I looked in the mirror
and didn’t see myself at all.
Not even a flicker
of the girl I used to be.
Just a stranger,
a hollow thing
with eyes that didn’t shine,
a face that had forgotten how to belong
to a person.
It was too late,
too far gone
to pull myself back,
to fight the current that had dragged me under.
The fog wasn’t lifting.
It was consuming,
swallowing everything I had been,
everything I thought I could be.

I finally understood—
this wasn’t just a phase,
wasn’t just a passing storm.
This was my life now,
the endless drifting,
the constant distance
from everything and everyone,
from myself.
I was lost,
not in the world,
but in me,
in this body that no longer felt like home,
in this mind that had turned against me
and left me adrift,
alone.

And the worst part?
I’m still here,
still watching,
still waiting
for a moment of clarity
that I know will never come.
This is my reality,
and it’s slipping through my fingers
like smoke.

There’s a comfort in the way
thunder rolls across the sky,
a rumbling lullaby of rain
drumming on rooftops,
filling the air with the scent of earth
turned wild and electric.

I press my hands to the window,
watch lightning carve silver veins
into the bruised sky,
feel the deep hum of the storm
settling somewhere in my chest,
like an old melody returning home.

In this darkened dance of sky and rain,
I am small but somehow whole,
washed clean beneath the storm’s gentle fury,
wrapped in the beautiful chaos
of thunder's steady, echoing heart.

When I was young, life seemed like an open sky,
endless and blue, gentle as a whisper,
with sunlit mornings, warm and golden,
and nights that folded softly, never too dark.
Back then, we believed in heroes, in kindness,
in happy families, in laughter
that spilled freely across the dinner table,
in parents who kept us safe, tucked in tight,
shielded from storms, untouched by the world’s weight.

But now, with eyes open wide,
I see the jagged lines,
the fractures hidden behind closed doors,
the rot that’s seeped into every corner,
of homes, of hearts, of the earth itself.

I see a world teeming with cruelty,
where broken things are shrugged off,
where pain is passed around like an old family heirloom,
where wrong is worn like a second skin,
something we’ve all grown used to, too tired to shed.
So many are hollow, hiding unseen scars,
walking through days that cut deeper than we’d admit,
haunted by what the world took from them,
hearts shattered, lives upturned, faith crumbled into dust.

Once, I thought love was unbreakable,
that families held tight through the years,
but I’ve watched the vows unravel,
seen love grow tired, thin as paper,
and trust fracture into tiny shards
that can never be pieced back together.

Mental battles rage in silence,
quiet wars fought in the shadows,
the weight of it all hidden behind polite smiles,
as we march on, as if nothing is wrong,
as if we aren’t bleeding beneath these layers
of what we show, of what we hide.
It’s as if the world itself has turned,
into something sharp-edged, unforgiving,
like we’re all just ghosts haunting each other,
too afraid to ask if we’re all this broken.

I remember a time, or maybe I imagine it—
when life was simpler, softer,
when even the wind seemed gentler,
and our dreams felt safe in our hands.
Was it real, that time before I knew
how people could hurt, could betray, could destroy?
Or was I shielded by the naivety of youth,
by some shield that faded as I grew?

Maybe the world was always like this,
a place that tears at the seams,
but I was wrapped in a bubble, too young to understand,
too innocent to see the cracks in the fabric.
Or maybe it’s the world that’s changed,
grown crueler, colder, hungry for pain.

Yet somewhere, deep in the shadows,
something small still whispers,
that not all light has been swallowed,
that there’s goodness hidden in pockets, in people,
a kindness that survives despite the ruin,
a hope that flickers, even as darkness swarms.

I’ve felt it, in the gentle touch of a friend,
in the warmth of a stranger’s kindness,
in moments so fleeting they’re almost forgotten—
but they’re there, small sparks that remind me
of a world not entirely lost, of hearts that still beat soft.

Maybe it’s foolish to hold to this hope,
to believe that something better remains,
but I can’t let go of it, not yet,
because if I’ve seen the good, if I’ve felt it,
then maybe others can too,
maybe it can spread, like a quiet rebellion,
maybe it can grow stronger than the hurt,
maybe it can heal us all, if only we let it.

I want to believe that life isn’t this cruel,
that the beauty I once saw wasn’t a lie,
that beneath this world’s scars and shadows,
there’s a place where love, kindness, and grace
still take root, grow tall, and reach toward the sun.

And maybe, just maybe, if we hold on tight,
if we spread what goodness we have left,
the world can find its way back,
before the darkness takes it all.