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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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August is almost over. And I think I am a little sad to see it go. Not because it was an easy month. It wasn't. The losses. The fights. The hurts that came with them. There were days when I could barely find my way through my own thoughts, and nights when being alone with them felt like being trapped in a room with all the versions of yourself screaming and fighting each other, while you sat somewhere in the middle, listening to all the awful things they have to say about you. Still, the days kept coming. Each morning; I got up. I carried on. I tried to believe that feeling this much would not always feel like drowning. And yet, between all the hard moments, there were still beautiful things. The familiar comfort of home. Someone who loves me. An evening sky I almost missed because I was too lost in my own head. Maybe that is what I will remember most. That even in a month that took some things from me, life kept leaving little things behind. Small reasons to look up. Small reasons to stay present. Small, constant reminders that I am loved, no matter which version of myself decided to take the wheel that day. M. | August 2026

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My friend has been gone for a week. I still catch myself wanting to tell him things. Something that happened today. Something I know he would have laughed at. My mind is still trying to make sense of this new absence. Then I realised. My father has been gone for eleven years. Eleven years, and I still don't think I have really learned life without him. I don't even know if my mind has ever finished processing the fact that he is gone. Then how would I process this one? I said to myself, “we should write about this.” Because I always write about the people I cannot speak to anymore. I write the things I never got to say. I form sentences because sometimes they feel like the closest thing to a conversation. But tonight, my mind is stuck in that strange little pause between remembering and accepting. Tonight, everything hurts a little more than I know how to say. And the words keep floating somewhere inside me, only to disappear again into the dark clouds of my mind. M. | August 2026

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It’s hard when someone asks, “What’s wrong?” and I genuinely don’t know how to answer. Because how do I explain that it isn’t one thing? It’s everything. The big things, the small things, the things I never found the words for, the things I thought I had already made peace with. All of it, somehow, finding its way back to me at once. And then there is the other question: “How come I never see you anymore?” I don’t know how to tell them that I keep myself busy because being busy makes everything hurt a little less. So I keep moving. I disappear a little. I fill the hours until there is barely any room left for the one thing I still don’t know how to say - “Something is wrong, and I don’t know what.” M. | August 2026

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