Once Upon a Me

Several days ago, I wrote and released words that had been locked away behind a wall for years. It was a moment of pure catharsis, finally taking the old key and unlocking the door where they’d been imprisoned for so long. I opened the window. Let the soft morning light pour in. I cupped them in my hands, raised them to the sky, and let them fly.

But the door is still unlocked. The window still open. Morning light still shines through. And yet, some remnants remain. Like dust particles caught midair, suspended in light, not yet ready to settle. I stopped. I watched. I let them slide down the currents of brightness. Not pain anymore, but not peace either. Just something lingering.

The room is musty. The breeze through the open window rattles my inner chambers. I sit there, in the solitude of a memory, in the window of my past, and feel the echoes of pain fall around me in almost invisible pieces, ghostly remnants of a long night that never quite ended.

And it led me back to that fork in the road in my mind. The one I never dare enter. But I did. I took the step forward. I opened the pages of my past.

And there she was. The girl I once was. The one who wrote the dark night of her soul in trembling lines. I sat quietly with her. Unknown. A phantom of who I used to be.

My heart went out to her. This once-upon-a-me. Oh, if only I could have told her what was coming. The emptiness. The loss. The feeling of being completely, devastatingly alone.

I remembered the strength it took to wear her painted face. How she moved mountains every moment of the day just to not fold. Just to keep breathing. Just to keep pretending.

I remembered how each dagger cut her heart open again and again, how she healed just enough to be torn again. How each slice carved away a little more of the girl she used to be.

My heart reached for her, wanting to comfort the ghost of my own bones. Wanting to say: I’m here now. We made it.

But I know. This is the only way through.

Sometimes the only way to heal is to break beyond repair.

And still …

I want to place my hand on her shoulder. Whisper across the years…

You will survive this.

You will be changed. You will lose things you thought you couldn’t live without.

And somehow, you’ll live.

You will learn that the fire doesn’t just destroy. It refines.

You will learn that the breaking made space for truth.

You feared you’d never be the same.

And you were right.

But if only you knew-

Oh, dearest me,

you are going to

burn

so

beautifully.