Twenty-two years in lessons

Dec 2

This is a compilation, a memoir, a journey through lessons that I have learned as I come to close my twenty-second year in this life. These have all played a part in my life in one way or another and are lessons I have either recently learned or compiled from experiences in my journals.

Separating grief from closure; blaming yourself is not how you heal
On being misunderstood; people tend not to see you as you come but rather as they are
Longing and loneliness; the privilege only emptiness provides
Fulfillment in the unknown; finding tomorrow in today
Confessions of the survivor; granting yourself the grace you give others
Right where rejection left me; there is redirection in every unspoken goodbye
The crown that bore your name long before you did; confidence and its double-edged sword
Haunted by the versions I’ve buried; starting over, again
The branches of becoming; looking between the lines in a book
Impermanent beings; the hold we have on bottling emotions
No one is coming; you must save yourself
The endless staircase; how chasing the next big thing limits your freedom
A thousand tomorrows; finding purpose in the quietest places
Picking up the pieces; where the light breaks through
The weight of false hope; when letting go hurts less than holding on
The lion in your veins; where there is discomfort, there is a possibility
Living the questions; finding life in the unanswered
You are the love of your life; the promise you must make to yourself
Recognizing when it is time to pause; allowing peace and rest in your life
The anger that built you; finding your voice in the flames
Come as you are; the quiet miracle of being ever-present
You have time

1. Separating grief from closure; blaming yourself is not how you heal

Here’s the thing, this is one of those things that people will either completely agree with or completely shut down, and that’s okay. I have found that good intentions or not, most of the time you cannot blame yourself for someone leaving or for being forced to leave someone in order to move forward yourself. There are just ugly situations where one person leaves, or someone’s behavior is unjustifiable, or everything has become so confusing that you are unsure where it all went wrong or why you were even there in the first place. And then come those questions. “Well, what was the point of it all?” “Why did they do that to me, what did I do to deserve that?” “Why me, why not me?” “Why did it end?” But it should not be about the why, it should be about the how and the what... How will I use this experience to grow? What lesson did I learn here, from them, the situation, or about myself? What will I do from here on out? What would I do differently, if that’s the case?

There are times where you can sit and have a conversation with the person, be it a friend, or a partner, or even a parent. You can ask them your questions, get answers, and decide if they are justifiable for you and if they are not, decide how you will handle that too. Most of the time, someone’s behavior cannot be justified by a conversation or a lifetime of them and sometimes you might never get to hear their side or tell them yours. So what do you do then? What do you do when someone walks out of the door before they even sit down? Well… I have learned that no answer is the best and loudest answer you can get.

You also cannot let a lack of direct closure stop you from moving on, you must learn the value of accepting some situations just for what they are. I have found that more times than not, there is no closure, at least not from the source. And in the attempt to search for meaning where there is none, you exhaust yourself and find yourself right back where you started.

So what now? Well… this is the lesson that I feel has no right or wrong answer, each experience, relationship, or situation requires a different set of tools that varies from person to person. But you can start by grieving it… yes, you read that right. You are allowed to mourn a relationship, a friendship, or anything that you either did or didn’t receive closure for. When a loved one passes on we are given a mourning pass, we get a funeral, we get pity, and then we cope. Well, don’t downplay this situation, treat it the same if you must. You are allowed to mourn, to be angry, to be sad, to be confused, and to want a proper goodbye or maybe you even want to hurt them back. This is the time for reflection and this is not to say you did anything wrong, maybe it was one-sided, maybe it was mutual, or maybe… you don’t even know whose fault it was. This time calls for reflection, not necessarily to fix something but rather to put that emotion into something besides searching for answers. In my experience, I have used this time to reevaluate why I let a situation get so out of hand, to take the time for myself and slow down, or do things I didn’t have time to do before, to see old friends, and to get to know myself again. In the worst case scenarios, where a close friend betrays your trust or the person who you thought was the love of your life decides you are not theirs, it might have nothing to do with who you are and I will say this… It’s not fair, it’s just not fair, I know it isn’t but your pain is your responsibility to bear. So you can let yourself fall prey and watch as the pain becomes suffering or sit with the aches and hear them out before you turn them into lessons. One last thing, you are allowed to grieve or go through the process of moving on or coping for as long as you require it, there is no linear healing and there is no cure-all but there can be peace if you so choose it.

2. On being misunderstood; people tend not to see you as you come but rather as they are

There is a piercing kind of loneliness that comes with realizing you have been misunderstood, it is a terrible fate… but it is a part of being human. As complex beings one would think it would lead to comprehending each other better but instead it serves to divide and to put our frame on everything around us. Being misunderstood, not because you have failed to communicate clearly but because people can only perceive you through the fragmented lens of their own reality. Every critique received is an echo of someone else’s inner world, reverberating through the corridors of their mind, the fears they house, the biases, and all the unhealed wounds. It’s not about you; it never was. It’s about the pieces of themselves they have yet to confront or choose to hide and it is those shadows they see reflected back when they look at you.

This does not mean you must accept the criticism or bad intentions others place on you but it does allow you to see past their intentions. It’s not your fault that they judge you for things they have yet to reconcile within themselves. I have come to understand that being on the receiving end of these projections is not a sign of inadequacy but of your own light, the kind of light that exposes the darkness that others are not ready to see. But always remember, that burden is not yours to carry. Distancing yourself from these critiques is an act of self-preservation, a radical form of self-love. It’s realizing that you don’t have to absorb every word thrown your way like it’s gospel truth. You’re allowed to step back, to create space between yourself and the world’s perceptions of you. This space is where you begin to breathe again, to hear your own voice beneath the noise of others’ opinions. And I know that when you are in the midst of a raging storm against you, it is so hard to hear your voice, to hear your thoughts, to center yourself. I’ve been there and I know it is deafening. It’s not an easy thing, to let go of the need for validation or to distance yourself from the critiques that have burrowed so deeply under your skin that they almost feel like your own thoughts. But clinging to these external definitions of who you are keeps you trapped in a loop of seeking approval and shrinking yourself to fit into boxes that you were never meant to occupy.

As humans we try to shape the human experience through bridges of words that often fall short, we misinterpret and we misunderstand. But that does not defeat the complexity of our existence, we keep on, as we have for two hundred thousand years. Think of wildflowers in fields, in an untamed meadow we are bound to incorrectly name a few of the flora, or misjudge their beauty, or fail to see them at all. But their existence is not diminished by your lack of recognition and ours doesn't either, they bloom because it is in their nature to do so. So reach for the sun, feel the rain on your petals, and grow roots that are so deep in the soil that nothing will shake you. Even clouds do not have the power to change the essence of who you or that flower is, shadows are merely passing through.

Your essence and your very being is the river that carves its way through life, ever-changing, ever-moving, but often unaware of the strength of water. The stones thrown may sink heavy to the water and create ripples that distort our view for a few moments but they do not stop the river from flowing and they certainly do not define the course it takes.

The most painful part of this lesson has been realizing how deeply we crave validation, how easily we let others’ perceptions dictate our self-worth. We absorb their words like they are mirrors to our soul, forgetting that a mirror can only reflect what it is shown. We see ourselves in fragments—pieces of someone else’s story—believing that if we can fix the broken image they’ve painted, we will finally be whole. But that’s not how healing works. That’s not how growth happens. I’ve felt the sharp edges of these projections, mistaking them for the contours of my own flaws. I’ve questioned myself, wondering if I was too much or not enough, bending under the weight of opinions that had nothing to do with who I actually am. I tried to shape-shift to fit the expectations and critiques of others, only to find myself further away from my own essence.

In this process of distancing, you’re not abandoning others; you’re simply choosing to prioritize your well-being over their comfort. It’s not your job to make yourself small so others feel bigger. It’s not your duty to silence your voice so others don’t have to confront the silence within their own. You are allowed to set boundaries, to say that you will not be diminished by their inability to see you clearly.

When you distance yourself from these projections, you give yourself permission to grow in directions you were afraid to explore before. You stop holding yourself back, waiting for someone else to give you permission to be who you are. You stop internalizing their fears as your limitations. And as you begin to disentangle yourself from these critiques, you’ll find that the things that once held you down no longer have any power over you. This distance, this detachment, is what allows you to move forward. It’s what allows you to see your own reflection clearly, without the distortions of others’ unresolved pain. It’s what allows you to trust yourself again, to know that you are more than enough just as you are. You don’t need anyone’s validation to be whole; you don’t need anyone’s permission to take up space. You begin to understand that distancing yourself isn’t about building walls—it’s about creating the space to grow. It’s about honoring your own path, your own journey, without being tethered to the projections and judgments of others. It’s about looking in the mirror and seeing yourself, not as others have defined you, but as you truly are: complex, evolving, and beautifully human. There is an unyielding truth of your own being that must be your compass, the keys to a fate that you are the ruler of, a map that is yours to mold and change.

This is liberating, no longer feeling the need to mold yourself into something more palatable for others, you stop trying to fill the voids in their perception of yourself. And I won’t lie, this will wound you before it mends you, it is lonely to realize that so few people actually see you. But believe me when I say it is much more lonely to live inside a mind and body so contorted to someone else’s likings, it is like drowning in your own soul.

This is your life, and you get to choose how to live it. Know that you get to decide whose voices matter and which ones you let go. And in that letting go, you find a freedom that is both fierce and gentle—a freedom to be unapologetically yourself, to move forward with clarity and purpose, and to become everything you were always meant to be.

You are not here to shrink or dim yourself for those who fear the brilliance of your being. You are here to blaze, to flow, to carve your path through the world, whether they choose to see you or not. Your existence is not a question to be answered or a burden to be carried; it is a force, a flame, a current—unwavering, uncontainable, and undeniably yours. Before we part know this, if they cannot handle your light, let them close their eyes. If they choke on your waters, let them swallow their own bitterness but do not for one second allow them to drown you in your own existence.

3. Longing and loneliness; the privilege that only emptiness provides

In the darkest moments of missing something and feeling lonely, there is a privilege that lies dormant. How absurd, to see such a hollow pain as such, a socially debated topic, but it is fitting. So, for the next few minutes, discard your previous understanding of how the word privilege is used. Just as privilege is a universal topic, so is the concept of loneliness and of yearning. As human beings, we have a vast range of complex emotions, so it comes as no surprise that we could spend our entire life in our heads, and still experience these feelings as strongly as we did the first time. We spend a lot of our time missing someone or something we once had and lost or that we just do not have at the moment. So how can we not bestow that a title as equal in nature, in grandiosity, such as the word privilege? To have a life filled with love, parents, friends, and family that you can miss, that is a luxury that not all can afford, not that you could ever put a price on connections of the heart. This implies that you have created a support system that is overflowing with beautiful and fulfilling relationships that you have maintained and continued for a reason. These friendships, romantic relationships, and familiar ties that hold true to the character that you and those close to you hold. It takes effort from both parties to sustain a fulfilling wholesome connection; to make time, hold and share commitments, to receive and give trust, to give respect, and to show up when it matters, it takes consistency.

With age, continuing to foster relationships becomes harder. It was all so easy when we were kids and all it took was sharing our toys to be friends or even in high school where you sat together in every class. Adult friendships and relationships are their own type of difficult, so much so that we have created apps and sites to meet and get to know people. Even then we know that our bios and qualities are curated the same way our resumes are, they are only worth so much on their own. Then we do first dates like interviews and we carefully select how we move forward. The dynamics of our relationships spiral when we no longer live down the street from each other and our calendars do not align the way our class schedules once did. We graduate, we move cities, states, and even continents. We go to college, we get married, we have kids, we switch interests, careers, partners, political sides, religions, tastes, and perspectives. We grow up, our priorities switch, our lives come crashing down, our success takes off, we lose loved ones, and we learn. One day, we wake up and we are oceans apart form the person we used to be and the people we once called friend.

And in comes the longing, days filled with remembrance of a time that no longer is. We grieve and miss who we used to be, a version of us that we have shed. We long for days spent laughing in the living room, walking hand in hand down the street, long nights filled with even longer talks on a rooftop, early mornings spent drinking coffee together, adventures that were unplanned but led to core moments, road trips, parties, dates, and small talk. Now you sit in a place that you are unsure is home, but it is here, and that is a stability you have not felt outside of those memories in a long time. Home feels like those memories and housed there is the privilege.

In the absence of what once was, in the space left by what you’ve lost, there is a profound truth: to miss is to have known. Missing is the aftermath of having been touched by something greater than yourself—a person, a place, a time that mattered so deeply it left an imprint on your soul. That’s where the privilege lies. It’s not in the pain, though the pain is real. The privilege is in the richness of the experience, in the fact that you had something so meaningful that its absence leaves you longing.

This kind of yearning is not granted to everyone. To some, life passes in a blur of superficial connections, or maybe in total isolation, where bonds are never formed deeply enough to be missed. To miss someone means that you were vulnerable, that you opened yourself up to the possibility of being hurt because the joy of the connection was worth the risk. To miss a place means that you found solace or a sense of belonging there—a privilege in a world where many search endlessly for somewhere to call home. And to miss a time means you’ve lived through moments so significant they’ve become part of your identity, shaping you in ways that can never be undone.

And love is not lost if the memories persist.

So how did we get here, well when we miss something, we associate it with loneliness. We dispute the linear relationship that being alone and lonely hold. Loneliness is a state of being that can occur in company or in true isolation. But, like missing someone or something, loneliness carries with it a privilege that is rarely recognized. It’s in those quiet, empty spaces of our lives that we are confronted with ourselves in a way that few other experiences allow. There is also a privilege in the fact that loneliness, at its core, is a yearning for connection—a reminder that you’ve experienced connection before and that you understand its value. Loneliness is also the space where creativity is born. It’s in those moments of solitude that we can dive into ourselves and pull out the raw materials of creation—art, writing, music, ideas that could never take shape if we were constantly surrounded by noise. Some of the greatest works in human history, the deepest insights and breakthroughs, came from individuals who spent time alone, exploring the vast landscapes of their minds. To be lonely is to have time with yourself, a privilege in a world that often forces us into constant interaction and performance for others.

I also came to realize that for women, loneliness is a freedom that we were once not granted. In the past, women rarely had the autonomy to be alone, to have space that wasn’t occupied by someone else’s needs or expectations. The absence of physical and emotional solitude was a reflection of societal constraints that dictated how women lived their lives, limiting their freedom to choose how they spent their time and who they became. Loneliness, in this context, was not even an option because there was no room for it. A woman’s time and energy were expected to be in service of others—husbands, children, households, communities. In modern society, women have fought hard for the autonomy to carve out their own paths, paths that allow for self-discovery, introspection, and solitude.

The privilege of loneliness is intertwined with the privilege of choice: the choice to live alone, to not marry if one doesn’t wish to, to pursue careers, education, or personal growth without the constant pressure of fulfilling traditional gender roles. To choose their own paths, to see that the traditional path is still in their options but again, to even have that option. Loneliness, when it arises, reflects the fact that women can now prioritize themselves in ways that weren’t always possible. They can choose solitude without being seen as outcasts or failures, something women of the past were often judged for if they stepped outside societal norms. There is also the privilege of claiming loneliness as a legitimate experience. For centuries, women’s emotional lives were often dismissed or minimized—labeled as hysteria, dramatics, or an excess of feeling. Today, to sit with loneliness as a woman is to honor the depth of our emotions, to acknowledge that it’s valid to feel disconnected at times, and to recognize that our emotional world is as rich and complex as anyone else’s. Loneliness, for women, is no longer something to be pathologized or hidden away. It’s a marker of independence, emotional depth, and self-awareness.

So isn’t it a privilege to hold space for both—the connections that shaped us and the solitude that allows us to grow beyond them? Your testament to having lived is a heart that is whole and a mind so filled with marks of all you loved and longed for.

4. Fulfillment in the unknown; finding tomorrow in today

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why." Four years ago, while getting ready to apply to college, I very confidently started one of my college entrance essays by quoting Mark Twain. I thought it to be a thoughtful attention-getter for whoever read my essay at the universities. Little did I know that it would take three more years to truly understand what it really meant and that it was I whose attention should have been pulled to dig deeper into how crucial that quote would stand to be in my life. That after months and months of evidence pointing to a true calling, I had learned to drown out the noise. Until the day came when everything was so quiet, so numbing, that when I tried to listen, the noise was no longer there, and isn’t that what I had wanted all along? That at some point, I believed I knew my purpose. I had mapped out my future and constructed a vision so clear that I could almost taste it. The problem was that as time passed, that dream—the one I had poured all my energy and focus into—started to feel hollow. It stopped being a dream that inspired me and instead became something that drained me. I was on autopilot, chasing something that had long since lost its meaning and I found myself adrift in the dark.

But the original dream eventually stopped serving its purpose and so I found myself so far from the person who once wanted this dream and unknown to the person who could ever want anything else.

What once was a dream, had steered right past being a nightmare, and straight into sleep paralysis. I was breathing but I had lost the light and life that once lit up my soul.

What do you do when you know this path no longer serves you but you see no other option? This is where many of us consider how much time we have already spent here, or how much money, or energy we already invested. But true peace and satisfaction are not comparable costs.

So I sat in silence and listened, trying to get the noise back, I went back to things that once made me happy, things I used to spend days on. This meant revisiting hobbies I had abandoned, activities I no longer made time for, places I no longer visited, and people I had neglected. I listened to my soul and then the distorted noise started coming through, though still intelligible, it was there, it had come back. Now I had to turn inward, to understand. And to decipher a soul I no longer knew, I first needed to just listen and be comfortable with the uncomfortableness of it, and what it could mean. What it meant was that I had to pay attention to what called me, until day after day of trial and error, conversations with myself, and diving deep into shadow work, and introspection, it sparked. Until that once irritating, then silent noise, slowly made its way back in whispers, almost unrecognizable to the untrained ear. But I had worked so hard, fought against everything I once believed in, and unlearned all that once made up who I was, to know that the real calling would not come flooding in with a roar, all to overwhelm me, the way I used to hope it would.

Instead, those whispers filled my ears until it sounded like coming home.

And then? That’s when I began to feel the shift—a quiet, almost imperceptible pull from deep within. It wasn’t some grand epiphany or a shot in the dark of clarity. It was subtle, like the first light of dawn creeping over the horizon after a long, endless night. And it wasn’t just one moment but a series of moments, where little by little, I began to rediscover parts of myself I had forgotten but also to start anew. I began to let go of the old dream that no longer served me, and in doing so, I opened myself up to new possibilities.

I realized that coming out of the darkness wasn’t about finding the “right” path immediately. It was about learning to trust the unknown and trust myself within it. For the first time in a long while, I wasn’t forcing myself into a mold I had outgrown. I allowed myself to sit with uncertainty, to explore new ideas, to try on new dreams without needing them to be perfect or fully formed. I let myself breathe again.

This process was messy. It wasn’t a straight line from lost to found. There were days when I felt like I was making progress, only to wake up the next morning feeling like I had lost it all again. But I kept going. I kept listening to those whispers.

But now I know that the darkness is not a permanent state. It’s a place we all pass through, but it’s not where we have to live. I’ve learned to be patient with myself in those moments, to let them come and go without letting them define me.

Coming out of the darkness wasn’t about reaching some final destination. It was about accepting that life is fluid, that dreams evolve, that who we are today may not be who we are tomorrow—and that’s okay. What matters is that we keep moving, keep listening, and keep showing up for ourselves in the ways that do matter. The path forward may not always be clear, but as long as we keep taking those steps, no matter how small, we will find our way.

For so long, I had been conditioned to believe that not knowing what came next was a weakness, a flaw in my plan, something to be fixed. But the more I leaned into it, the more I understood that the unknown was not a void to be feared but a blank page waiting to be filled.

I started to love the feeling of not knowing. There was something liberating about letting go of the pressure to have everything figured out. I didn’t need a five-year plan or a perfectly laid-out path to feel secure anymore. What I needed—and what I found—was a deeper connection to the present moment. It wasn’t easy at first. We’re often taught to think that fulfillment is something we have to chase, something we find at the end of a long journey after we’ve ticked off all the boxes and accomplished all the goals. But what I came to understand is that none of us really knows what will make us feel fulfilled in the future. Life changes, and so do we. There are no guarantees that the things we pursue today will be the things that sustain us tomorrow. And that’s okay.

It’s a strange thing, isn’t it? To realize that no matter how much we plan or how hard we work, fulfillment isn’t guaranteed. We can pursue the things we think will make us happy, but the truth is, none of us can predict what our future selves will need. We might change our minds, our circumstances might shift, or we might discover that what once served us in another time, no longer resonates with us now. That’s part of the beauty of the unknown—it’s unpredictable, yes, but it’s also full of possibility.

And so I learned to hold my future loosely, with open hands. I stopped trying to control every outcome and started trusting that whatever comes next will unfold as it should. That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped dreaming or planning—I still have goals and ambitions—but I no longer let them dictate my worth or my happiness. And the problem isn’t dreaming or planning, but committing yourself to only one opportunity and closing yourself to anything else.

So yes, maybe I don’t know what’s coming next—and maybe I never will—but that’s what excites me now. I found freedom in the unpredictability of life and every day is an invitation to discover something new about myself, about the world, and about what truly matters.

When asked how I envisioned my life, I was once quick to list a career or a title, a degree, or a goal perhaps. But now? Now my answer is simple, it’s much more than that, but it is also less. I want peace in what I choose every day, a slower life where I can still be surprised by what each moment brings, where authenticity guides my life and nothing else. A life not dictated by how much I make, what career I choose, or what’s next, but by the quality of each decision, each and every moment, and all my days from here on.

My answer may differ now, but the question has not changed, it still remains.

5. Confessions of the survivor; granting yourself the grace you give others

There’s a silence that seeps into your bones, the kind that arrives after too many apologies uttered into the dark. A silence that echoes back with all the things you said you’d forgive yourself for, but never did. And it wasn’t because you didn’t want to—oh, how you wanted to—how you tried to offer yourself the same grace you so readily gave away to others. You handed out forgiveness like loose change to strangers, to lovers who left, to friends who didn’t stay, until your pockets were empty. But when it came to you, there was nothing left.

Maybe it was easier to forgive the world than to look in the mirror and confront the jagged edges of your own reflection. The reflection that still bore the weight of every choice you wish you hadn’t made, every word spoken that you can’t unsay. You’d forgive anyone who stumbled, who failed, who broke you, but you couldn’t extend that mercy to yourself, couldn’t release your grip on the things you were never meant to carry this long. It’s like you thought that if you just held on tight enough, you could make the hurt go away.

You carry the weight of those desperate moments, the times when you did what you thought you had to do just to keep your head above water. You look back and see yourself—raw, frantic, clawing for anything that would let you breathe, if only for a moment. You survived, but it came at a cost. You pushed away those who loved you, you isolated yourself, you lost a job or an opportunity, you took risks you wouldn’t take now or maybe you didn’t take the chance, you sat in indecision for too long and let life pass you by. You let grief consume you and you lost yourself in the middle of a burden so big that you didn’t even know there would ever be an after. It was grief and that is all you knew.

You look back at those days when you had the weight of a thousand lives and you judge yourself, maybe for the way you handled it all or maybe for how you abandoned a path because it was just too much. You pick apart the choices you made in order to survive, all the lines you crossed, and you refuse to forgive yourself for that. You pull apart the parts that died so you could live; you sit in the morgue and you destroy the survivor and turn around to offer peace to the real traitors.

It’s not that you chose to hurt anyone, least of all yourself. You didn’t choose the fight, you didn’t choose the desperation. But you did choose to survive, and sometimes, that choice came with a darkness you couldn’t escape. A darkness that left its mark. You can’t shake the guilt that lingers like a shadow behind you, a reminder of the person you became when there was no other option. You wonder if you’ll ever be able to let go of the shame that still clings to your skin, or if you’ll always be haunted by the memory of who you had to become.

The truth is, survival isn’t clean. It’s not heroic. It’s ugly and brutal and filled with quiet betrayals, some of which you didn’t realize you’d made until long after the dust had settled. It’s the way you cut off pieces of your own soul to feed the fire, the way you numbed yourself to the pain because feeling it meant being consumed. You thought you could go back, gather the pieces, and put them back together once it was over. But they don’t fit the same way they used to.

And maybe, just maybe, there is still time to accept that you were doing the best you could. That the choices you made in those moments were not the sum of who you are. That you were trying to survive a war no one else saw, and you came out alive. Maybe one day, you will find it in yourself to forgive even the person you were when you were just trying to keep breathing.

When you look in the mirror, are there parts that feel like they are not you? The scars and the burns that remind you of that time you made it out alive, they shouldn’t feel like a burden, they are a miracle. Like remnants of ash that cling to your skin, they are a part of your survival—a reminder that you walked through the fire and made it out the other side, even if you’re still a little burned. And it’s a long road, this journey to forgiveness, it may take longer than you expect. But perhaps, as time wears on, you’ll see that even the harshest landscapes soften, and you’ll see the world reflecting growth back at you. There’s beauty in the way the earth heals itself, slowly, one season at a time.

6. Right where rejection left me; there is redirection in every unspoken goodbye

When you're left standing on the threshold of a bitter night, watching someone, something, or some opportunity disappear into the storm, it feels like the world is pulling away from you. The tracks left behind in the snow fade quickly, a reminder that the path was never yours to follow. The emptiness settles in quietly, numbing your heart while everything you thought you knew freezes over, replaced by an unfamiliar ache. It seeps into your bones and burrows itself in your soul and it threatens to stay and make a home there.

But rejection is not the final word—it is a reflection, a staggering surface that forces you to confront what you dared to dream. It strips you bare, unraveling the fabric of every 'almost' and 'what if,' peeling away illusions you clung to so desperately. It stings with a fierce kind of honesty, showing you the pieces of yourself you were too afraid to look at, too unwilling to see. You come face to face with your hopes, distorted and fragmented, as though the very act of hoping was a sin too great to forgive.

The pain of being turned away—by someone, by an opportunity, by life itself—tears open wounds you didn’t even know existed. It is the ghost of every previous goodbye, the residue of all the times you weren’t chosen. And yet, buried in that hurt is the quiet, persistent whisper of truth: that perhaps you needed to be broken in this way, shattered along these jagged lines, so you could rebuild yourself differently. It burns you inside out, but it brings to the surface all that which you had pushed down for so long. Turning the lingering ache into a piercing wound that cannot be ignored any longer.

Rejection doesn't mean you were unworthy; it means you are being rerouted. Forced to take a different path, one paved with deeper understanding, one that will ask more of you than you ever thought you had to give. It is through the torment of letting go, of watching the dream crumble, that you are given the chance to look inward. To reflect on why it hurt so much, why that 'yes' meant so much to you. And in that reflection, you find not an answer, but a question: what are you still holding onto, and why?

The heartache of rejection doesn’t fade easily. It lingers, like the phantom pain of a lost limb, but it does more than hurt—it awakens. It shakes you from the complacency of chasing what you thought you needed, and dares you to seek what your soul truly craves. The tears you cry are not in vain; they are the ink with which you rewrite your story, the blood that will carve out a new direction for you.

When the weight of rejection settles in, don’t let anyone tell you it shouldn’t hurt—because it will. It will tear through you, shattering the world as you knew it and leaving behind an agony so unbearable that you’ll find yourself longing for the familiar, even if it was hell. The comfort of that known darkness starts to feel safer than facing the discomfort of what’s unknown, even if it promises paradise, even if it might be better. There is a temptation to cling to what was, because at least you knew the pain there, at least you could brace yourself for it.

And as the song goes, I too found myself haunting that restaurant corner, imagining every possible scenario where things would come undone and then be mended again. I pictured that person walking back in, us sitting down and erasing everything said and unsaid, as if rejection could be rewritten. I imagined I could unread every email, leave the letter unopened, hoping I could un-feel doubt. How desperately I wished for a kinder rejection—one that would take me by the hand and whisper that it would all be okay, that would lift me up like a child and show me everything I would have missed if I had stayed there, complacent and unchallenged.

But rejection doesn’t arrive with gentleness; she doesn’t pause to offer you comfort or guidance. She leaves you alone with your brokenness, expecting you to sift through the pieces until you find some way to rebuild. It’s there, in the ache of being undone, that you learn what it means to rise without being rescued, to heal without knowing how long the healing will take.

And so, when you are brought to your knees, sobbing at the cruelty of a world that did not choose you, remember this: rejection is not a verdict, but a redirection, through reflection. It is the fire through which you are forged anew, a reminder that you are meant for paths unknown, places unimagined, futures yet unformed. It is the universe’s way of tearing you from the arms of what was never meant to hold you, no matter how fiercely you loved it.

7. The crown that bore your name long before you did; confidence and its double-edged sword

They don’t tell you that confidence is a quiet kind of suffering—how it demands you to stand tall even when the weight of all your doubts clings like chains to your ankles. They only see you moving forward, forging a path others fear to tread, and they mistake your strides for ease. They don’t see the nights you spent questioning if the dreams you chase are too vast for hands like yours. They don’t hear the whispers that tell you you’re not enough or the silent battles you wage against yourself just to show up with your head held high.

The truth is, your potential frightens them because it is relentless. It holds the kind of force that reshapes mountains and forges new paths through untouched forests. It is unapologetic. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t come without sacrifice. They don’t see the quiet moments when you ask yourself if it’s worth it—if the resilience you wear like armor is just another way to conceal the wounds that never heal.

Confidence is not the absence of fear; it’s the art of carrying it with you. It’s being able to look your insecurities in the eye and move forward despite them. It is standing in front of a mirror and knowing that the reflection staring back will never be perfect, but that is where the beauty lies. Because every step, every stumble, every fall is a testament to your strength. It is proof that even when you break, you don’t shatter—you rebuild.

The mindset you choose will shape your path. It is the quiet belief that echoes in the back of your mind when everything else falls apart. It is the will to endure even when the ground beneath you crumbles and the sky above feels too heavy to hold. The way you carry yourself, with all the love and fear and hope intertwined, is a defiance of every voice that has ever told you to shrink. It is a declaration that you will not be small, even if it means you must be alone in your greatness.

And yes, there will be moments where your presence will intimidate others, where your light will cast shadows on those who are not ready to see. It is not your duty to dim yourself for the comfort of others. Let them be uncomfortable. Let them look away if they must. Because your confidence is not for them—it is for the person you are becoming, the one who knows that every ounce of struggle has only made them stronger, and who has learned that they are worth the fight.

So carry yourself with the weight of your potential, even when it feels like it’s pulling you under. Walk boldly into the unknown, even if your legs tremble beneath you. Because it is not just about where you are going—it’s about the courage it takes to go there.

Let them fear you. Let them be in awe of you. Let them see what it means to be unbreakable. Do not let the weight of the crown keep you from wearing it, and do not let the fear of bruises stop you from wielding the sword.

Because one day, you will look back and see that every pain, every doubt, every question was leading you here, to this moment where you stand, whole and unafraid, and you will realize that it was never about what they thought of you—it was always about what you thought of yourself.

You are the storm and the calm, the beginning, and the end. You are everything you were afraid to be and more than you ever believed you could become.

So claim your place, not just on the throne of triumphs, but in the chaos of the battles that shaped you. Let the kingdom see your strength, not in the absence of wounds, but in your ability to rise each time, scarred yet unyielding. You were never meant to simply sit at the summit of your victories—you were born to wrestle the reins from fate itself, to forge your own path in the face of every doubt. There is power in the way you command your own story, in the resilience that echoes through every step, and in the quiet defiance of a soul that refuses to be ruled by anything less than its own potential. You are both warrior and ruler, and there is nothing more regal than a soul that wears its struggles like a crown.

8. Haunted by the versions I’ve buried; starting over, again

There are days when the weight of my own existence becomes unbearable, when I stand in front of the mirror and see someone I no longer recognize, or perhaps never knew at all. It’s not that I feel lost, exactly—it’s that I don’t know what it means to be found. It is not a loss that happens all at once, not some dramatic unraveling that I could pinpoint and say, "Here. This is where I ceased to be." It is a gradual erasure, a slow dissolution that leaves behind a ghost I can neither reclaim nor recognize. We grow up thinking that identity is this thing we can misplace and then search for, as if there is a "me" that exists somewhere out there, waiting to be reclaimed. But the truth is far less romantic and infinitely more painful: there is no version of me that I can retrieve from the past, and no future self to stumble upon. There is only the raw, unrelenting task of creating who I am, piece by fragile piece.

I have spent so many nights trying to unravel myself, clawing through memories to see if I could trace my way back to a time when I felt whole when my reflection didn’t make me feel like a stranger in my own skin. But all I found were empty vessels—echoes of someone who lived in the moments before life took its toll, before I had to let go of things I swore I couldn’t live without. I used to think that if I could just get back to that place, to that person, I would feel okay again. I would feel like me. But I know that version is gone, stripped away piece by piece, and I am haunted, not by the loss itself, but by the knowledge that perhaps that version of me would have known how to bring the dead back to life—how to salvage what I have now left behind.

But that person was made up of events that had not yet happened, people who would one day be absent, a lack of memories of a time that would shatter her world. This person was a culmination of everything that happened before the storm.

The hardest part is the emptiness that comes between versions of myself—the liminal space where I am no one, nothing, just a hollow shell in the process of being filled. I try to remind myself that it is okay to exist in fragments, to be incomplete, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less. The world keeps demanding that I show up as a fully formed person, while I am still chipping away at the pieces that no longer fit, bleeding over the parts that do.

Every version of myself has come with a price. There are pieces of me that I have buried just to make room for new growth, parts I’ve shattered beyond repair in the process of becoming. The innocence I’ll never get back, the dreams that crumbled under the weight of reality, the hope I’ve had to abandon just to make it through another day. I’ve grieved these losses quietly because there is no ceremony for the self that is left behind. There is no funeral for the person I once was.

I have come to understand that I cannot return to who I used to be, nor can I wait for some future self to emerge fully formed. I find myself living in the spaces between—between who I was and who I am, between who I am and who I could be. These are places without edges, where I exist in fragments, half-formed and splintered. It’s the emptiness that frightens me most, the void where I must choose who I am again and again, knowing that each choice is a small death of who I might have been. The only choice I have is to create myself deliberately, to carve meaning from the chaos and build my identity out of the ashes. It’s a brutal, never-ending process, and it demands everything from me—every joy and every sorrow, every love and every loss. But it is the only way I know how to exist: as a work in progress, a creation that is constantly becoming and never finished.

I am both the sculptor and the stone, the artist and the canvas, the creator and the creation. I am what I make of myself, and though it may be a work in progress, it is mine. I will keep carving away, knowing that with every strike of the chisel, I am shaping not just my future, but my present. And maybe that’s enough. Maybe the beauty is not in being found but in the act of endlessly creating, in the resilience to keep becoming even when it feels like there is nothing left to build from.

Amidst the act of carving away the old and sculpting the new, there is a quiet, defiant beauty. There is a profound liberation in knowing that I am not bound to any one form, that I do not have to adhere to the shapes that once defined me. In the painful dismantling, I uncover not just loss but also the gift of infinite possibility—freedom that resides in each deliberate choice to reshape, to evolve, to rise from the remains of what I’ve left behind. There is grace in this ever-changing process; a raw, honest peace in embracing the uncertainty and knowing that, no matter how many times I break, I can always begin again. In creating myself day by day, I find not only resilience but a deep, unshakable presence—a sacred space where I am free to grow endlessly, to live as an artist of my own becoming.

And perhaps that is enough—to be in constant motion, to be perpetually undone, to live in the tender spaces where creation meets its own undoing. I am not lost. I am not found. I am becoming, and that is the most I can ask of my soul.

I cannot lie to myself and say it isn’t an act of violence, to become what I am at the cost of all that I was. I am the sum of every version I have destroyed and every version I have built. I am that which rises from empires met with their demise, born anew in the ruins of tragedy; when the dust settles, I see not an end, but the possibility to begin again.

9. The branches of becoming; looking between the lines in a book

I remember the first time I read a self-improvement book. I was younger—maybe too young to understand the weight I was carrying but old enough to know I was drowning beneath it. I sat on my bedroom floor with the book in my lap, fingers nervously tracing the cover, desperate for the promise inside those pages to be real. It had to be real. Each chapter was a glimmer of hope, each tip a lifeline. I tore through it like someone gasping for air, convinced that if I followed each instruction perfectly, if I practiced every affirmation with conviction, I could fix my life. Like some long-forgotten prayer, I thought if I could just get the words right, everything else would fall into place.

But when I closed the book, the silence returned, nothing had changed. And I realized something devastating—I wasn’t healed. I wasn’t whole. The pain I thought I’d buried was still there, untouched by the wisdom of others, untouched by my frantic attempts to overcome it. I had done everything the book said. I had repeated the affirmations, written the gratitude lists, practiced the power of positivity. I had fixed my habits and rewired my routines. But I hadn’t fixed myself.

Self-improvement promises progress, but it doesn’t promise peace. It tells you how to think, but it doesn’t teach you how to feel. It can show you how to mask your insecurities, how to rationalize your fears, but it won’t tell you how to look in the mirror and face the eyes staring back at you—those eyes that still remember the nights you couldn’t sleep, the memories that crept in like unwelcome guests. Self-improvement will tell you how to put one foot in front of the other, but it can’t make your feet stop aching. It can’t make the road feel less endless.

I wish someone had told me that self-improvement is just a tool—a hammer, a saw, a chisel. Tools are meant to be used, not worshiped. They are instruments, not answers. They help build, they help mend, but they do not replace the hard work of healing. No tool can reach the places you’ve buried deepest inside yourself. No habit can rewrite the chapters of your life that haunt you. Each book I finished, each lesson I learned, left me staring at a reflection I didn’t recognize. It was as though I had spent so long trying to become better that I forgot how to simply be. I thought if I just kept working on myself, I could eventually reach a point where the emptiness would dissolve, where the pain would make sense, where the years of feeling like I wasn’t enough would be a distant memory. But that moment never came.

I started to realize that no amount of self-improvement could give me back what I was looking for. Because what I was searching for wasn’t a better version of me—it was the lost parts of me. It was the innocence of believing the world was fair, the naïveté of thinking love was always unconditional, the comfort of feeling safe in my own skin. Self-improvement taught me how to push through the hard days, but it didn’t prepare me for the hollow ones. It didn’t teach me how to sit with my sadness and let it be seen, how to let my brokenness be part of my wholeness.

We live in a culture that preaches progress as a cure, self-betterment as salvation. We are told that if we strive, if we optimize every inch of our lives, we can achieve some higher state of fulfillment. But fulfillment is not an achievement; it’s not a finish line to be crossed after a marathon of improvement. It is found in the quiet acceptance of who you are, not just who you could be. It is found in letting go of the idea that you need to be fixed in the first place.

What we find in these books is a beginning, it is the patient unhurried growth of a tree–it unfolds in silence, imperceptible and endless, defying the urgency to become something more. You cannot force the roots to deepen nor command the branches to stretch toward the sky; it all happens slowly, beyond your sight, a quiet persistence buried beneath the soil. Each day is another ring hidden in the heartwood, almost too faint to matter, but adding weight, adding strength. Transformation does not come from a sudden burst; it is the weight of a thousand unseen moments, when no one is there to bear witness, in the gentle sway of branches learning to bend without breaking, even as the wind threatens to tear you apart.

10. Impermanent beings; the hold we have on bottling emotions

As emotional beings, our ability to control our feelings is inherently limited. No science or medicine can sustain us in a constant state of happiness, no matter how our hormones may surge. We cannot preserve joy by storing it away for a rainy day. We cannot stretch an emotion’s lifespan, nor can we swap out an unwelcome feeling for one of our choosing. Yet, despite knowing this, we try—time and again. We pour our energy and willpower into resisting emotions we are unprepared to face, either because we dread them or because their timing feels all wrong. We suppress and deny until the pressure builds until we are overwhelmed, teetering at the edge of breaking. And so we must ask ourselves: what then? What do we do when we can no longer hold back the tide?

Well firstly, we stop trying to bottle up our happiness because you’ll find that at the end of the day, you’ll have an empty bottle and lost moments of joy and bliss. And isn’t that the most tragic human flaw? Trying to control and extend the life of something that was only meant to last momentarily. We cut off the wings of a butterfly, attempting to keep it from leaving, and then mourn its ending as we do our own self-inflicted suffering. We admire beauty in flowers and instead of taking in its beauty while it flourishes, we rip it from its life force, only to drown it and douse it in chemicals in an attempt to extend its time and then dry it out to print it on the wall as a reminder of this delusion we have all planted in our hearts, that we can somehow do the same with our happiness.

But as we all know, humans have an extensive range of emotions and we are the most complex beings. So why do we capitalize on preserving emotions only to be left as empty vessels?

This is something we either rarely consider or find constantly on our minds. And now, we must ask: what can we do? How do we navigate the complexities of daily emotions, as well as the intense feelings that accompany life’s bigger moments? The answer lies in peace and perseverance. It sounds simple—deceptively so—but choosing peace is a deliberate act, a commitment we make each day to stay whole and unbroken. Peace isn’t an emotion or a fleeting feeling; it is a state of being, a mindset that grounds us. It’s not about becoming monks; rather, it’s about embracing the wisdom in their teachings. When we cultivate peace within, we gain a higher perspective, as though we’re observing ourselves from above, with a clarity that allows us to approach life differently. It meets us in our darkest moments, guides us when decisions weigh heavy and walks beside us in our most joyous days.

We often imagine peace as an elevated state of constant bliss, an ultimate achievement. But it’s quite the opposite. True peace lets us experience every emotion fully, without letting it seep uncontrollably into other parts of our lives. It anchors us, steering us away from rash impulses. This practice becomes easier as we weave it into the fabric of our daily existence. On joyful days, surrounded by loved ones or when reaching milestones, peace encourages us to cherish every second, knowing this too shall pass. In times of grief, it finds us not by numbing the pain but by allowing us to confront it. It grants us the space to acknowledge hard emotions, to explore where they come from and what they reveal, without being consumed by their depths. It lets pain and grief be felt for what they are, without turning into prolonged suffering.

Peace means saying, “I see you, now what can I do with this?” It gives us permission to sit with our pain, to cry, to let the heaviness take hold for a moment, but also to trust that we’ll rise again when it passes. It’s the understanding that while the storm may rage, we are still capable of finding our footing, of moving forward once the skies begin to clear.

This is the lesson we must learn from nature, we cannot try and contain the sun to extend its healing and we cannot block out the rain in fear of drowning. See how peace becomes our catalyst, the fertilizer for our soil. You must take the water with the warmth when it comes, this is how you will grow.

11. No one is coming; you must save yourself

The greatest betrayal I’ve ever felt wasn’t at someone else’s hands—it was my own. For years, I waited, convinced that someone would step in and pull me from the abyss, that someone else would see me struggling and decide I was worth saving. I spent so much time staring at the horizon, waiting for a ship that was never going to sail. And somehow, despite the hopelessness, I stayed. That’s what we’re taught, right? That someone will come. But no one did.

It’s not just the absence of help—it’s the betrayal of every story I was ever told. The ones where the hero is saved at the last moment, where the struggle is only temporary because someone always comes to make it better.

I screamed for help in every way I knew how—through my silence, my anger, my desperation—but the echoes were the only response. And when I finally realized no one was coming, it broke something in me.

I don’t know what hurt more—the truth itself or the fact that I had wasted so much time waiting for someone who was never going to show up. I wanted to hate the world for it, to rage against the unfairness of being left alone to carry so much. But beneath all that anger was something harder to face: the knowledge that if no one was coming, I had to step up.

It wasn’t an act of courage; it was survival. I looked in the mirror and saw someone I had ignored and abandoned in my desperation to be saved by someone else. My relationship with myself was a battlefield, scarred and broken, but it was all I had left.

I’ve learned that every relationship I have with others is just an extension of the one I have with myself. When I rejected myself, when I treated my needs and my worth like they didn’t matter, the world mirrored that back to me. Loving others while hating myself—it was a hollow, impossible treachery.

The truth is still hard to sit with: no one is coming. But there’s power in it, too. Because if no one is coming, then no one can stop me. Every moment I choose myself is a step toward becoming the person I’ve been waiting for all along.

It’s not an easy love, the kind you give yourself. It’s messy, raw, and painful. But it’s real. And every time I choose to show up for myself, I feel the weight shift. I am the rescue. I am the hero I’ve been waiting for.

And I have written about love before. Prose and poetry that bled out of me, spilling stories of heartbreak, yearning, and loss. But nothing I’ve ever written—not a single word—could compare to this, not for a second. This is the hardest love story I’ve ever had to write. But it’s the only one that truly matters.

12. The endless staircase; how chasing the next big thing limits your freedom

When I think about success, the version I used to chase looked like a finish line—a moment where the struggle would be over, the effort validated, and the victory unmistakable. I thought success was waiting for me somewhere out there, at the end of a process, gleaming like a trophy. Imagine my surprise when the achievements didn’t make me happier or when I realized that I never even got to enjoy the journey, because I was so focused on the end.

There’s a beauty in progress that I never saw when I was so focused on the next big thing, the next goal, the next impossible standard I set for myself. Every time I overlooked the small victories along the way, I robbed myself of the quiet success that comes from simply continuing.

Taking one step at a time sounds simple, but it’s revolutionary. It means letting go of the pressure to leap ahead, to have it all figured out, to move faster than your own pace. It’s learning to appreciate the process instead of chasing the outcome.

The truth is, you expand as you move forward. Growth isn’t something you stumble upon at the end—it happens in every decision, every adjustment, every moment you choose to keep going even when it feels like you aren’t making progress at all. Success is not the mountain you climb; it’s the strength you build with each step.

It’s not about reaching the next goal or landing the next big thing. It’s about how you show up for the journey. Life is not measured by the quantity of your successes but the quality of every moment in between.

13. A thousand tomorrows; finding purpose in the quietest places

When I look back at the younger version of myself, I see someone desperate to matter, desperate to be more than ordinary. I thought if I didn’t leave a mark, if I didn’t find this earth-shattering, world-changing purpose, then none of it would mean anything. What was the point of existing if I wasn’t extraordinary? Adults around me fed that belief. They saw my talents and unknowingly placed the weight of expectation on my shoulders. Every compliment became a quiet command: Be more, do more, become what we believe you can be. And I carried it all, every word, every expectation, believing that greatness was the only way to justify my existence. Anything less would mean I had failed.

This is what I would say to that little girl and if it resonates then this is for you too:

I see you, clinging to that idea, chasing something that feels just out of reach. You’ve tied your worth to impossible expectations, to the belief that if you aren’t the best, the most remarkable, then you are nothing at all. But let me tell you what I wish I had heard earlier: you do not have to be extraordinary to have purpose.

Your worth isn’t in the applause or the accolades. It’s not in the milestones that look good on paper or the moments that make others cheer. It’s in the quiet ways you show up for the world. It’s in the tears you shed for things others barely notice. It’s in the way your heart breaks and heals again, stronger every time.

You’ve always felt things more deeply than others, haven’t you? Every joy, every heartbreak—it all cuts deeper, stays longer. The world has tried to make you believe that’s a flaw, that the weight you carry is something to hide, something to fix. But I want you to know this: the depth of your feelings is not a burden; it’s your strength.

When you let yourself feel, really feel, you begin to see the world in ways others can’t. You notice the cracks where light sneaks in, the beauty in places no one else looks. You have always held this quiet, profound ability to make the people around you feel seen, to show them that their existence matters. That is purpose. That is power.

I’d give anything to go back and hold your hand in those moments when you doubted yourself most. I would tell you what no one ever told me: that your purpose isn’t found in what you do, it’s found in who you are. It is in the way you care, in what makes you happy, in how you spend your time, and how you smile when you do something you love.

You don’t have to save the world, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t making it better just by being here. By showing up, by choosing to feel, by embracing the things that make you unique, you are leaving your mark in ways you may never even realize.

You will grow. You will see the power in the way you feel, in the way you love, in the way you simply exist. And one day, you will understand that being yourself—fully, deeply, unapologetically—is the greatest purpose you could ever have.

Your purpose is not a destination; it is a garden. It grows in the small, unseen moments, in the quiet care you give to yourself and the world. You are not here to set the earth ablaze; you are here to nurture it, one seed, one breath, one day at a time.

Even the quietest hearts can carry the weight of a thousand tomorrows.

14. Picking up the pieces; where the light breaks through

Pain is inevitable—it has always been waiting for you, lingering in the shadows, patient and unrelenting. It does not ask for permission, nor does it soften its touch. It carves through you, tearing apart everything you thought was safe, everything you thought you could hold onto.

Grief is no kinder. It arrives unannounced, taking root in your chest, and refuses to leave. It will hollow you out, make a home of your emptiness, and whisper that this ache is all you’ll ever know. And in those moments, you will believe it. You will believe that this pain defines you, that it owns you.

But the suffering—that is yours. No one can impose this on you, nor are you dealt this by life. It is the weight you add when you refuse to feel what must be felt. When you lock the grief away, when you try to outrun the pain, it festers. It poisons you from the inside, turning every wound into a blade you wield against yourself.

I know this because I have done it. I have taken my grief, my pain, and let it rot inside me. I have carried it to places it never belonged, spilling it into spaces that should have been sacred. I have bled on those I loved because I could not face the wounds within me.

This is the truth you must face: If you do not feel, you cannot heal.

There is no shortcut through the agony. You cannot numb it away, you cannot drown it in distractions, you cannot bury it deep enough that it won’t claw its way back to the surface. The only way out is through. You must let it consume you, let it tear you apart, so that when it is done, you can begin to rebuild.

Healing is not gentle. It is an act of violence, it is raw, and it will break you before it makes you whole. It demands that you sit with the parts of yourself that hide in shadows, that you hold space for the unbearable weight of what you have lost. But it is the only way.

Because if you do not heal, you will carry this pain forever. It will seep into everything you touch. It will warp the way you love, the way you trust, the way you see the world. And worst of all, it will hurt the people who never deserved to feel the sharp edges of your suffering.

You owe it to yourself—and to those who love you—to heal. To break the cycle of suffering that you create when you refuse to face what is broken within you. It is not easy, and it will never be fair, but it is the only way to stop the bleeding.

Healing is not the absence of pain—it is the act of picking up the shattered pieces of yourself, even when they slice your hands open. It is standing in the wreckage and choosing, piece by jagged piece, to rebuild. The scars will remain, etched like constellations across your skin, a map of everything you’ve endured. And though the glass may never be whole again, the light will still find a way through.

And broken glass—well, that may be the most human of art. A kaleidoscope of jagged edges and piercing light, sharp enough to hurt but beautiful enough to hold.

15. The weight of false hope; when letting go hurts less than holding on

Hope is a beautiful lie, soft and silver, glinting in the dim light of your desperation, a vision in the dark that promises everything will be okay if we just hold on a little longer. But sometimes, hope isn’t a lifeline, it feels more like a chain. It tethers you to things that are already gone, to futures that will never come, to a version of yourself that doesn’t exist anymore. And the longer you hold on, the heavier it becomes, dragging you further into the abyss.

Letting go isn’t a single moment; it’s a quiet unraveling. It’s the slow, deliberate tearing of the threads that held you together, one by one, until you are left raw and undone. It’s the sharp ache of realizing that no matter how tightly you grip, the pieces will never fit back together. It’s the quiet destruction of dreams you nurtured for years, shattering like glass under the weight of reality. You pour yourself into the cracks, trying to mend what cannot be mended, until you’ve given so much that there is nothing of you left.

You tell yourself that maybe if you just try harder, wait longer, give more, things will change. But deep down, you know the truth—you’ve known it all along. The truth doesn’t whisper; it screams. It demands to be heard, no matter how tightly you try to cover your ears, and no matter how hard you try to be good at it.

False hope is insidious—it asks for everything and gives you nothing in return. It cloaks itself in the illusion of perseverance, dressing denial in the garb of faith. It doesn’t just lie to you, it asks you to lie to yourself. It forces you to ignore the signs, to silence your intuition, to trade your peace for an illusion. But truth is relentless. It seeps through the cracks no matter how thick the facade, and when it finally comes crashing through, not even the most wicked can bear witness.

But here’s the thing no one tells you about letting go: it doesn’t kill you. It doesn’t break you in the way you fear. It hurts—it will tear you apart, leave you gasping for air, and make you feel like you’ve lost everything. But in that pain, there is clarity. In the emptiness, there is space. And in the surrender, there is freedom. Not the kind of freedom that comes easily, but the kind that allows you to start again, piece by painful piece.

You’ll cry for the versions of yourself who fought so hard to hold on. You’ll grieve the person who believed so deeply in a lie they could not see beyond it. But you’ll also come to realize that hope, real hope, is not a promise that things will get better—it’s the courage to let go of what never could.

Because sometimes, holding on is the most painful thing you can do. And sometimes, the greatest act of love—for yourself, for your future—is to let go. Let it break you. Let it free you. Let it hurt. And then, let it end, only then in the emptiness, can something new begin.

16. The lion in your veins; where there is discomfort, there is a possibility

Listen to me. I need you to hear this, even if it burns, even if it feels like I’m tearing something from you that you’re not ready to give. You cannot stay here. Not in this comfort that feels more like hell. Not in this version of yourself that makes you smaller every time you tell yourself it’s enough. It’s not enough. You know it. You have known it for too long.

I know you're tired. I know you think this is all you deserve, but I need you to understand—you were not made to live like this, buried alive in a life that barely feels like yours.

That itch, that restlessness, that pull in your chest you’ve been trying to smother, it’s not going to stop. It doesn’t matter how much you distract yourself or convince yourself this is just how life is. You can only tame the lion for so long before it shreds the cage to pieces. You are not safe where you are. You are stifled. You are suffocating.

Fear is not your enemy. Do you understand me? Fear is your guide. Fear is the map that shows you exactly where you need to go. It’s not here to protect you from change, it’s here to shove you into it. The thing you are most afraid of, the thing that makes your stomach churn and your hands shake? That’s it. That’s the door you’re supposed to walk through.

You have been taught to fear your own power, to believe that stepping into the unknown will destroy you. But the truth is, staying here will destroy you far more, never knowing what is out there, that is what will break you.

You don’t get to escape discomfort. Staying the same will hurt. Moving forward will hurt. But only one of those paths leads somewhere worth going.

You are going to want to tell yourself that it’s too late. That you have already made your choices, built your life, planted your roots. You are going to cling to the lies you have told yourself to avoid the unbearable truth: that you have outgrown this life and you are terrified of leaving it behind. But I am telling you now, you are allowed to change your mind. You are allowed to shatter what you have built if it means saving yourself. You are allowed to put yourself first when the ground is shaking and you know it is time to jump. Because if you don’t, you will go down when it crumbles and believe me, it will.

You think you’ll lose everything, but what you don’t realize is that you have already lost too much by staying. You have lost time but you will lose more if you choose to stay. And if you don’t move now, you’ll lose yourself too.

It will feel like the ground is being ripped from beneath you. You will cry over the life you have spent years trying to convince yourself you wanted. You will ache for the version of yourself who stayed so still, so small, because it was easier than risking the fall. But you cannot keep betraying yourself just because standing still is comfortable. You cannot keep waiting for the right time.

There is no right time and there is no right place, when opportunity arises, you must let it show you how grand it could all be. You must give yourself the chance to become so much more than you could have asked for or ever even imagined is possible.

Discomfort is not punishment. It’s the crack in the facade, the moment the mask slips and you see yourself as you truly are: desperate, restless, alive. This is your life. The only one you get. And I need you to stop waiting for permission to live it. I need you to see that there is no permission in the first place, there is only you and whatever excuse you sit in front of.

Listen to me. You are not just making a choice to change; you are choosing to honor your growth, to see what’s possible outside of your comfort zone. You don’t need to know what’s on the other side. You don’t need to be ready. You just need to go. Let it hurt. Let it burn. Let it break everything you thought you were, because the person you become on the other side will thank you. And I promise you that they are worth so much more than whatever temporary fear you are holding onto.

I need you to know that I have been there too. I’ve felt the weight of standing still, clinging to a life that no longer fit, because the thought of stepping into the unknown felt like walking into a void. I have been trapped in that dark, fearful space, convincing myself that comfort was enough, that smallness was safety, that the life I had was all I deserved. I stayed there longer than I should have—paralyzed, aching, afraid to admit that the pain of staying was quietly killing me. And when I finally let go, when I finally allowed myself to step into the fire of change, it hurt more than I thought I could bear. But it also saved me. It taught me that there is no light without breaking, no growth without discomfort, and no freedom without fear. I see your fear because it once lived in me, too. But I promise you, there is so much more waiting for you on the other side. Please don’t stay where you are. You are worth the leap, you always have been.

17. Living the questions; finding life in the unanswered

In my teenage years, I was never easily influenced by most things, I was quite rebellious, so it came as a complete surprise when I found a few simple words that changed the way I lived.

Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “Live the questions,” and the words wrapped around me like a prayer I didn’t yet understand. At the time, I was a storm of wonder—always searching, always asking, always trying to pull answers from the fabric of the universe. Not out of impatience, not out of frustration, but because the not-knowing felt like a daze, and I thought the answers would pull me to the surface.

I asked everyone, teachers, strangers, anyone who might hold the key. But their words always fell short, and I was left with the hollow ache of something unfinished. The world felt like a puzzle no one else seemed desperate to solve, and I was alone in my hunger for understanding. It turned into an anger that felt like the burden of a crown and only I understood its weight. I thought if I could just piece it all together, I’d feel whole. That the cracks in me—the questions—were flaws to be filled.

But Rilke told me something different. He showed me that the cracks weren’t mistakes; they were the path. That the questions weren’t traps; they were the beginning. And slowly, I began to realize that answers were never the point. Life doesn’t hand them to you because they aren’t things to be given. They are things to be lived. You don’t get to skip ahead to the ending, no matter how desperately you long for it. You live the questions, and in doing so, you find the answer, and often times you become the answer.

I didn’t understand it then. Not fully. But I started to let the questions breathe. I stopped trying to choke them with certainty and instead let them stretch into the quiet spaces of my life. They began to grow roots in me, and though I didn’t see it at first, they were shaping me. With every step I took, with every unknown I dared to hold, I was becoming something new.

There is beauty in the questions, in their silence, in their weight. They are not walls; they are doorways. They are not barriers; they are keys. And if you’re standing on the edge of one now, trembling, unsure of what waits on the other side, I need you to know this: It’s okay to not know. It’s okay to wonder. It’s okay to be unfinished.

Life doesn’t need you to have the answers right now—it needs you to live. To walk forward, even when your feet are heavy with doubt. To breathe in the uncertainty, to let it carve you, stretch you, break you open in ways you can’t yet imagine. Because the light you’re searching for doesn’t come in flashes or floods. It comes slowly, like dawn slipping through a crack in the blinds. And it comes only when you have lived enough of the dark to understand it.

So hold the questions close. Let them rest in your hands, your heart, your soul. They are not your burden—they are your becoming. One day, when the weight of the questions feels lighter and the edges of your doubt have softened, you’ll realize that the life you have built wasn’t waiting at the end of some distant answer—it was stitched together in every moment you spent not knowing, in every step you took despite the fear. You’ll look back and see that the questions were never trying to hurt you; they were trying to guide you, to keep you searching, to keep you alive. And you will understand that the answers don’t matter nearly as much as the person you became while learning to live without them.

You will understand that the answers were never waiting—they were the subtle light at dawn after the longest night, revealed only because you endured the darkness long enough to see them.

18. You are the love of your life; the promise you must make to yourself

Eyes are the gateway to the soul, at least that’s what they say. So what did it say about my soul when I avoided my own eyes? When I glanced at the mirror just long enough to fix what’s wrong but never long enough to see? It wasn’t shame, not exactly. It was something quieter, something harder to name. A kind of emptiness I couldn’t explain, like standing in front of someone you are supposed to know but don’t. And the worst part? That someone was me.

Hating yourself is not loud, it’s quiet. It’s the way you flinch when you see yourself too clearly, the way you fill your days with enough noise to drown out the silence that might make you listen. It’s the little ways you tell yourself you’re not enough: the apology for taking up space, the avoidance of your reflection, the silence when you should speak. It is in the way you pretend you’re fine, even when you’re breaking, because you’ve convinced yourself that you are not worth saving.

For so long, I thought love would come from someone else. That if I just waited, if I just gave enough, someone would come along and show me what it felt like to be whole.

It’s a brutal thing to realize that you’ve been running from the one person you can never escape. And it’s even harder to sit down with that person—to look them in the eyes, the ones you’ve avoided for so long, and say, I’m not leaving you anymore. It’s messy. It’s painful. It is cracking open all the wounds you have been covering and letting them bleed until they can heal.

But do you know what happens when you stay? When you stop running? You find the love you’ve been searching for. It’s not perfect. It’s not easy. But it’s real.

You are the love of your life. You have to be. Because no one else can carry you through the nights when the weight feels unbearable. No one else can hold you the way you’ve been aching to be held, except you.

So stop looking away. Stop waiting for someone else to fill the space you’re afraid to touch. Meet your own eyes, even if they’re brimming with tears, and feel it: I choose you. I will not abandon you anymore. And in that moment, raw and broken as you are, you’ll begin to see the beauty in what you’ve always been.

There is something wild and freeing about realizing you don’t have to be perfect to deserve your own love. That you don’t have to wait until you’ve fixed yourself to sit with yourself and then you start showing up for yourself.

You start doing things you’ve been too afraid to do alone—not because you need to prove anything, but because you finally trust your own company. You take yourself to dinner and realize how good it feels to eat without worrying about filling the silence. You walk into a movie theater alone and smile at the freedom of choosing whatever story you want to see.

You book the trip you’ve always dreamed of, not because someone else will be there to share it, but because you deserve to see the world through your own eyes. You walk streets where no one knows your name, where every corner feels like a secret waiting just for you. You sit quietly on a bench overlooking a view that doesn’t need to be shared to be unforgettable. For the first time, you let yourself feel the freedom of being untethered—no one to perform for, no one to please, no one to fill the silence but yourself. And it’s not empty. It is intentionally full. Full of the sound of your steps, the rhythm of your breath, the way the world seems to expand when you realize it’s yours to explore. Alone, you are not smaller—you are vast, uncontainable, and completely, beautifully free.

You make decisions—big ones, little ones—without waiting for permission, without asking anyone else what they think. You stop apologizing for wanting what you want.

It’s not about “finding yourself.” It’s about building a life where you don’t feel the need to escape anymore. It’s about realizing that your own company isn’t something to endure—it’s something to cherish, to get to know. It’s yours. It’s all yours. And that’s not lonely—it’s liberating.

To be alone with this version of yourself is not a waiting period—it is coming home, a quiet moment where you finally sit down in the life you have built, look around at all that you are, and realize you’re not just enough—you are everything you’ve been waiting for.

19. Recognizing when it is time to pause; allowing peace and rest in your life

The world will tell you to keep going. To push through, to endure, to stretch yourself so thin you no longer recognize the shape of who you are. It will tell you that rest is lazy, that slowing down is failure, that stopping means you’re falling behind. But they are wrong.

Rest is not giving up. Rest is a quiet rebellion, a way of showing yourself that you matter enough to pause. It’s letting your body exhale all it’s been holding, giving your mind the space to soften, to wander, to breathe. Rest is not a luxury; it is survival. It is the bridge that carries you back to yourself when the world has demanded too much.

There is a kind of courage in stillness, in choosing to sit with yourself and listen to what your body has been trying to tell you. Let yourself lie down. Let yourself take up space. Let the weight you’ve been carrying slip off your shoulders, even if only for a little while. Yes, the world will keep spinning without you, but that is okay.

You are not a machine. You do not have to earn your right to rest. Your worth is not measured by how much you produce, how much you endure, or how much you give. It is measured in the simple fact that you are here, alive, breathing, deserving of the care you so freely give to others.

Take the moment to close your eyes and remember what it feels like to be whole. You are not falling behind; you are giving yourself a chance to heal. Be gentle with yourself. The world is loud enough, let this be your quiet place.

20. The anger that built you; finding your voice in the flames

Anger, they said, is unbecoming. It is dangerous. It is something to be swallowed. But what they didn’t tell you is that anger, left unspoken, does not disappear—it lingers. It carves itself into your bones, threads itself into your blood, and passes quietly through generations like a family heirloom.

This is not the kind of anger that flares and fades. It is deeper, older. It belongs to your mother, your grandmother, and every voice that trembled but refused to break. It is the anger of being unseen, unheard, of being told to fit into a mold too small to hold all that you are. And it is time you let it speak.

Anger is not your weakness; it is your inheritance. It is the voice that rises in your throat when you’ve been quiet too long, the force that tells you that you deserve more, that it is not okay. It is the boundary you have drawn in the sand, the line that says, You will not cross this. Not anymore. Anger, when claimed, becomes power. And power, when wielded with intention, becomes transformation.

But finding your voice isn’t just about shouting into the void. It’s about the quiet moments, the ones where you dare to speak the truths that make your hands shake. The truths that you’ve buried so deep you almost forgot they were there. It’s looking someone in the eye and saying, No. You cannot have this part of me. It’s mine.

And yes, it will be messy. It will be raw. People will call you difficult, dramatic, too much. Let them. Let them see you as they want, because this is not for them. This is for you. This is for every time you bit your tongue, for every time you let someone take more than they gave, for every time you told yourself it wasn’t worth the fight.

Your voice is not just yours—it is an echo of all the voices that came before you, the ones that were silenced, the ones that fought, the ones that didn’t know they were allowed to fight. To speak is to honor them. To speak is to honor yourself.

So let the anger rise. Let it carry your words. Let it shape your boundaries and light the path you’ve been too afraid to walk. Because the truths you’ve been holding back—they are your power. And the world needs to hear them. You need to hear them.

And when you speak, when you finally let the fire burn as it was meant to, you’ll realize that the anger was never there to destroy you. It was there to save you.

Because the fire they feared wasn’t in the wood or the flame—it was in the women who refused to be silent. And that same fire lives in you. Remember, they called witches to all of those they could not control—so be the witch, the storm, the reckoning they never saw coming. And never, not for a single second, tame your voice.

21. Come as you are; the quiet miracle of being ever-present

The moon doesn’t rush to become full. It knows that its beauty lies not in completion but in the journey—the slow unveiling, the quiet retreat, the way it exists wholly even in its slivers. It doesn’t mourn the shadowed parts of itself or apologize for not being enough. It simply comes as it is, night after night, trusting the rhythm of its phases. To be present, you must do the same. You must arrive in this moment as you are—not as the person you were yesterday, nor the one you hope to become tomorrow. Just this version, right here, right now.

Life does not shout its miracles. It moves in whispers. You don’t notice the moment when the tree you planted offers its first shade or the exact second the winter frost gives way to spring. And so often, you miss it: the doors you prayed for, the ones you begged to open, they appear before you so subtly that you step through without even realizing. Life has a way of leading you into the answers without ever announcing them.

But to feel it, to truly feel it, you have to stop chasing. Stop rushing toward some imaginary version of yourself that you think will finally be enough. You do not need to catch up to your life—it is already here, waiting for you to notice. Be intentional with your time, not as a currency to be spent but as a gift to be held. Each moment you let slip by is a piece of the miracle you are living, the quiet unfolding of a story only you can write.

The moon is no less whole when it is new than when it is full. The willow tree doesn’t mourn its falling leaves, nor does it force them to grow again before their time. So why do you rush yourself to become something you are not ready for? Why do you carry the weight of who you think you should be instead of resting in who you are?

Take it one day at a time. You do not have to carry the weight of what is not yours yet. The moon isn’t ashamed of its shadow, and neither should you be. Trust that even in the smallest, dimmest version of yourself, there is purpose. Let yourself be in-progress. Let yourself exist in the in-between.

This moment—this phase—it doesn’t need to be perfect to matter. It does not need to feel monumental to mean something. It just needs you, as you are, to meet it.

Trust that you are where you are meant to be, even if it feels unfinished, even if it feels small. You are enough for today, just as the moon is enough for the night.

22. You have time

Here it is, the one I have been waiting to write for so long. The one that I have needed to hear for so long and only just recently learned. To be honest, I am still learning this one. In the face of fear, I have always kept going instead of hitting the brakes. But it is this, the few words that will allow you to release that breath you have been holding your entire life: you have time. You have time. We all have time, and yet we chase the clock down as if we can reason with it and ask it to slow down.I think this is one of the hardest lessons to learn as creatures of time. We have attached ourselves to this idea that we must all reach certain milestones at certain points or ages of our lives. We compare and we judge, and we repeat this until time has actually slipped away, but yet it keeps going, doesn’t it? You were supposed to call your mom last night and you didn’t, but you can do it now. You were supposed to complete your degree when you were 22 and you’re 25 now, so why not get back to it? You said you’d live abroad in your early 20s and now you’re in your mid-30s, so why not now?

The excuses we build are extensive, but the time we have is vast too—enough to begin again, to rewrite what you thought was too late.

One of the biggest limitations we have placed on time is the most dangerous: comparison. We compare until we exhaust ourselves. We compare how much time we spend on certain things. We compare to our younger selves, to friends, to family, to people we have never even met. We compare our timelines to our parents’—when we marry, when we have kids. We compare to friends when we switch careers, and we compare our assets and debts to our coworkers.

One of the hardest parts of learning you have time is realizing it’s not about having enough of it—it’s about what you choose to do with it. And choice is its own weight, isn’t it? The pressure to pick the “right” path, the fear of making the wrong decision, of wasting what little we think we have. I’ve felt that weight more times than I can count. And when I try to explain it, I always come back to Sylvia Plath and then to my very own fig tree:

Poet, writer, doctor, scientist, photographer, philosopher, pianist, mother, librarian, historian, diplomat, wife, painter, professor, linguist, bookstore owner, solivagant, journalist, actress, anthropologist, archaeologist...

This fig tree holds every version of me I’ve ever dreamed of, every path I’ve ever wanted to walk. I used to sit beneath it, like Plath, paralyzed by the thought of choosing the wrong fig, suffocating under the weight of all the lives I thought I’d never live. But I see it differently now. There is no wrong choice. The only mistake is letting the figs rot while you stand there waiting.

You don’t get just one opportunity—but you only have this today. So, choose a fig for this season of your life. More will grow when the time is right. This harvest won’t look like the next one, and that’s the beauty of it. Why spend an entire season worrying about the future only to regret not savoring the present?

I chose a fig. It wasn’t the one I thought it would be, but I bit into it anyway. If, one day, I decide to reach for a different fig, I will. I can try them all because life goes on, and so do I. The seasons will change, and so will the fruit. But here’s what I know now: I am not the fig—I am the tree.

Now, there is one exception I’ve seen time and time again: the unkept promises to loved ones who are no longer in this world. And you know what? I’m guilty of this one too, so I speak from experience. Those are hard, aren’t they? The promises you never fulfilled, the ones you thought you had time for. There’s no more time to see them, to eat with them, to invite them to your graduation, to your wedding. No more time for them to see you grow up, to do all the things you said you’d do together.

So, it is with a heavy heart that I say: do it anyway. Do it scared, do it sad, do it in their honor. See those you still cherish. Keep going for the events they should have been there for. In honoring them, you honor yourself. You do not get to stop time just because they no longer have any. Do this for them, but most importantly, do it for you.Fall in love with yourself, wherever you are. If you’re in a relationship, if you’re single, if you have kids, if you don’t, if you’re young, if you’re older—it is never too early or too late to love yourself. And it’s not just about loving who you are now, but loving the process of who you are becoming. Learn to love the progress, to marvel at the unfolding of all the versions of yourself you have yet to meet.

You have never been this version of yourself before, and you never will be again. Learn to see that as sacred. Most of all, you have time to slow down. The clock may not stop, but you can. You have time to sit, to breathe, to look at everything that has brought you here. This is when you must remember:that everything works itself out in the end. No feeling is final, no loss is absolute, and no gain is permanent.

Everything works out in the end. And if it doesn’t, it’s not the end.

Stop reducing this beautiful life to the sands of an hourglass, slipping away unnoticed. Time is not your adversary; it is the ticking of a clock, steady and deliberate, each second a heartbeat reminding you to live. It does not rush you, nor does it wait—it asks only that you pay attention, that you honor its rhythm by being present in its passage. You are not running out of time—you are walking with it, step by step, moment by moment, toward everything you are meant to become.

Ana Ramirez