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More than we would like to admit is that, the simplest yet hardest dream we could possibly have is to be happy. We are human, after all. We get tangled in our emotions, our circumstances, the things that hurt, the things that need fixing. And so we keep telling ourselves we will be happy when life gets a little easier. When work gets better. When our family is okay. When the future makes sense. When the person we love is okay. We keep placing happiness somewhere ahead of us, as though it is a reward waiting at the end of everything we have to survive. But perhaps we need to learn the difference between choosing happiness and allowing ourselves to feel it. Not in the shallow way of “just choose happiness", because sometimes life makes those words feel almost insulting. We cannot choose grief away. We cannot wish exhaustion or fear into disappearing. But perhaps happiness can exist alongside them. A good coffee. A book that makes us forget the world for an hour. A weekend spent with someone we love. None of these things fixes what is wrong. And maybe that is the point. We do not have to wait for everything to be okay before we are allowed to be happy. Maybe happiness is not something we find at the end of everything. Maybe it is simply something we give ourselves permission to feel when it finds us. Even in the middle of everything. M. | September 2026

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And then morning came. Somewhere between sleep and waking, something inside me shifted. Those feelings, hope and love, were still there, I think. I just couldn't reach them. Everything felt distant again. Maybe the thing that once protected me no longer knows when it is okay to let go. My mind rearranged itself into a place I didn't recognize, and suddenly I was tired of everything. Numb for no particular reason. So I pretended. I smiled. I talked. I moved through my day as though I was okay. Maybe that is what I have become good at, looking okay while quietly disappearing from myself. I don't know how many times I can keep finding my way back. And now the night is here. Slumber land is calling. And I'm afraid to fall asleep and wake up to another spotless, soulless room in my mind. Afraid to wake up to another stranger of myself. M.| September 2026

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Love with him is quiet. Steady and peaceful. It lives in the ordinary days as much as the beautiful ones, in the little things that are easy to miss but somehow stay with me. A familiar warmth in changing days. A voice I know, a presence, the same person at the end of every day, even when the day itself has been anything but gentle. He doesn't make me wonder. He doesn't make me chase. He just stays. He is the steady flame in my winter night, the warmth that stays long after the day has gone quiet. My little haven in a world that rarely stays still. My constant. M. | September 2026

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Because being the child of parents who went their separate ways is one thing. Being particularly close to the parent who left, and then watching his life continue somewhere else, is another. Even when you understand the circumstances intellectually, there can still be a part of you that never quite knows where you belong in that rearranged family. I think the part that stays with you isn't even the separation itself. It's being made to carry the emotional consequences of adults' decisions. One parent wants you to choose them. The other wants you to accept the new life they have built. And somewhere between those two demands is this child thinking, “What about me? Where do I get to stand?” But you don't always get to ask. Instead, you learn to read the room. Who is hurting. Who needs comforting. What you can say. What you shouldn't. When to stay quiet. When to smile. You learn to make yourself easy to have around. You pretend things don't hurt because, perhaps somewhere along the way, you learn that your hurting would only make things harder for everyone else. And eventually, the smile becomes almost automatic. You become good at pretending you're okay. So good that people start believing you. You were the strong child. An okay child. And then you grow up. But some things grow up with you too. You still read the room before you read yourself. You notice the smallest change in someone's voice. You feel responsible for pain that isn't yours. You become so accustomed to holding space for everyone else, that asking someone to hold it for you feels almost selfish. And sometimes you don't even know you're doing it. M. | September 2026

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Some nights, I don't want to be strong. I don't want to understand why I feel this way either. I don't want to find the lesson in it, or remind myself that tomorrow will be another day. Tonight, I am just tired. Tired in that place where even sadness feels like too much work. I have spent so much of my life being the person who stays. The one who answers. The one who carries things home without letting anyone see how heavy they are. I became so good at making sure everyone else was alright that somewhere along the way, I stopped asking what would happen if I wasn't. And there are things I miss that I thought I had already made peace with. People. Places. Old versions of myself. A life I might have lived if I had learned earlier that I was allowed to want things too. Sometimes I think that is what hurts most. Not losing everything. But realizing how much of yourself you quietly gave away while calling it love, responsibility, or simply the way things had to be. And now the night is here, and there is nothing left to fix. So I lie here, finally letting my eyes open their gates, and let the tears run freely down my face. M. | September 2026

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Sometimes life puts you back in a place you thought you had already left behind. You tell yourself that you can do this because you’ve done this before. But knowing you’ve been through something similar does not make you any less helpless when you find yourself there again. You don’t want to be in this situation. You didn’t ask for it. You wish there were something you could do to change it. You go over the things you can control, the things you cannot, the things you wish you could have done differently. You try to find a way around it because surely there has to be one. And sometimes, there just isn’t. You have to accept that this is where you are, for now. Even when you are disappointed. Even when you are angry. And still, you keep coming back to the same question: God, when do we get to have one uncomplicated good thing? You don't have to understand it right now. Really. You don't have to convince yourself that it's okay. You don't have to know how it will turn out. You haven't lived all of these days yet. M. | 1 September 2026

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Each day, the unspoken struggles and the silent tears broke me a little more, quietly, slowly, almost imperceptibly. Some days, I asked myself, ‘What if today I finally lost it?’ Life had messed me up over and over, until there were days when I could no longer see the worth in staying, or even the strength to try. Still, I’d choose to live for this moment. I’d choose to enjoy the rareness of love, the complicatedness of those bittersweet emotions. For the intensity of it all, and the pain that always comes unseparated, are reminders that I am alive. And as long as I am still breathing, I believe there’s hope and opportunity waiting to be embraced. And today, I chose to just breathe and to simply exist. M. | August 2026

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