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I've always put brakes on myself. Perhaps it was the only way I knew how to protect my own heart. To move carefully. To hope cautiously. To stop myself before life had the chance to. And somewhere between protecting myself from disappointment and preparing for every possible ending, I forgot that some things are only found by moving forward. As June comes to an end, I find myself wondering how much of this month was spent surviving, and how much was spent living. Maybe July doesn't need a different version of me. Maybe it only asks that I loosen my grip a little. Trust a little more. And allow myself to step toward what I want without apologizing for wanting it. And perhaps courage doesn't always look like taking a leap. Sometimes it is simply taking your foot off the brake... and trusting that the road ahead isn't only waiting to hurt you. M. June 2026

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Perhaps the part of what's frightening me is not only the pain I'm feeling now. It's also the pain I'm not feeling. I keep looking at that wall and wondering what it's holding back. If this is how much I hurt with it still standing, what happens if it comes down? The thought follows me everywhere. It sits beside me at work. It waits for me in the quiet. It gnaws at whatever sanity I have left. But what if my mind is not storing all of this grief behind a dam waiting to burst? What if it is already doing what minds are designed to do? What if it is carrying the weight the same way a river carries rain. Not all at once, but as it comes. A little when I cried during my lunch break. A little when a song catches me off guard. A little when I am alone with my coffee and there is no one to distract me from myself. A little when a memory drifts across my mind without warning. Perhaps the wall is not hiding a flood. Perhaps it is simply teaching the water how to pass through me without drowning me. Not all at once. Just enough for today. M. June 2026

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I met my twenty-year-old self and said, "I can finally afford all the books you used to stand in the library holding for a little too long. The ones you memorized from the back covers because buying them was out of the question. The ones you promised yourself you would own someday." She smiled. Then she glanced at her phone. "Dad's waiting outside." In that moment, I felt the distance between her life and mine all at once. M. June 2026

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Father's Day always arrives carrying two versions of time. One tells me it has been eleven years. The other tells me it was only yesterday. I have lived entire chapters of my life without you. I have grown older. I have become someone you never got the chance to meet. There are stories I still wish I could tell you. Small things. Important things. Ordinary things that somehow matter because they happened to me. And every Father's Day, I find myself reaching across a distance that cannot be crossed. I wonder what you would think of the person I am now. I wonder if you would be proud. I hope you would be. I hope you would see how hard I have tried. How I kept going on days when I wanted to stop. How I carried the lessons you left behind, even when I was afraid that I might forget the sound of your voice. The truth is, I still miss you. Not only in the big moments. Not only in the milestones. I miss you in the quiet parts of life. When something good happens and I wish I could tell you. When something hurts and I wish I could hear you say my name. When I see fathers and daughters together and feel that familiar ache return. Eleven years later, love has not disappeared. It has simply changed shape. It lives now in memories. In photographs. In stories. In the person I became because you were once here. And today, more than anything, I hope you knew how much you were loved. Happy Father's Day, Dad. I miss you still. And I think I always will. M. 21 June 2026

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Father's Day always arrives carrying two versions of time. One tells me it has been eleven years. The other tells me it was only yesterday. I have lived entire chapters of my life without you. I have grown older. I have become someone you never got the chance to meet. There are stories I still wish I could tell you. Small things. Important things. Ordinary things that somehow matter because they happened to me. And every Father's Day, I find myself reaching across a distance that cannot be crossed. I wonder what you would think of the person I am now. I wonder if you would be proud. I hope you would be. I hope you would see how hard I have tried. How I kept going on days when I wanted to stop. How I carried the lessons you left behind, even when I was afraid, I might forget the sound of your voice. The truth is, I still miss you. Not only in the big moments. Not only in the milestones. I miss you in the quiet parts of life. When something good happens and I wish I could tell you. When something hurts and I wish I could hear you say my name. When I see fathers and daughters together and feel that familiar ache return. Eleven years later, love has not disappeared. It has simply changed shape. It lives now in memories. In photographs. In stories. In the person I became because you were once here. And today, more than anything, I hope you knew how much you were loved. Happy Father's Day, Dad. I miss you still. And I think I always will. M. 21 June 2026

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"Are you okay?" I'm not sure. I haven't had time to think about it. I have a mother with a weak heart who needs to see that I'm getting better. A job that expects me to show up. An entire household whose peace of mind I have somehow become responsible for. So I keep moving. There is always something that needs carrying. A bill to pay. A message to answer. A worry that belongs to someone else and somehow finds its way into my hands. By the time the day is over, I am too tired to examine my own heart. And maybe that is the problem. Maybe I have become so occupied with surviving that I no longer know how to ask myself what I need. Sometimes, late at night, when the house is quiet and no one is looking for reassurance, I catch a glimpse of the question again. “Are you okay?” The truth is, I don't know. I have spent so long convincing everyone else that I am, I no longer remember the difference between surviving and being okay. M. June 2026

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Hey, have you eaten? Eat something, please. Pretending to be okay takes energy too. I know how easy it is to convince yourself that you are fine, to carry everything quietly, to smile when people ask how you are doing. But even the strongest hearts grow tired from holding too much for too long. So eat something. Drink some water. Rest, if you can. And I hope you know that you do not have to pretend with those who care for you. You do not have to make your sadness smaller. I suppose I needed this reminder as much as anyone. Perhaps that is why I wrote it down. So I would have something gentle to return to on the days I forget. M. June 2026

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I cry all the time. Not always because something terrible has happened. Sometimes it is a song. Sometimes it is a memory. Sometimes it is a passing thought that catches me off guard while I am making coffee or moving through an otherwise ordinary day. I cry because I miss things. People. Versions of myself. Futures I imagined so clearly that part of me still reaches for them without thinking. And I cry because I am in love. Because love, it turns out, is a far more overwhelming thing than I ever gave it credit for. It slips into everything. Into songs I have heard a hundred times before, into quiet afternoons, into the spaces between one thought and the next. Sometimes the tears arrive because I miss him. Sometimes because I am grateful he exists at all. Sometimes because there is no place for all this feeling to go, and it spills over in the only way it knows how. There are days I wish I could be lighter. Less affected. Less moved by everything. But then I wonder if the tears are not a flaw at all. Maybe they are evidence. Evidence that I loved. That I hoped. That I remained open, even after disappointment taught me not to. I used to think crying was a language of loss. Now I think it is also a language of love. So yes, I cry all the time. And perhaps that is not a sign that I am falling apart. Perhaps it is proof that something inside me is still alive enough to feel. M. June 2026

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There are days when I feel as though I have already lived several lives inside this one. One belonged to the girl who believed every goodbye was temporary. One belonged to the girl who learned otherwise. And somewhere between them stands the person I am now, carrying pieces of both, wondering which version of herself will arrive tomorrow. Some days, the distance between who I was and who I am becoming feels impossible to measure. Thoughts arriving all at once, like waves colliding in a narrow room. Like a hundred doors opening inside my head at the same time. I catch myself comparing who I am against who I think I should have become, against some imaginary finish line that was never there to begin with. Then I remember: I am not the finished version of myself. I am only the current version. And perhaps that is what growing really means. Not reaching some final, perfected state, but allowing room for change. Understanding that struggle is only one chapter of the story, not the whole of it. M. | be still June 2026

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I'm probably the saddest-happiest girl you'll ever know. There are days when the world feels heavier than it ought to, and I find myself exhausted by things that seem effortless for everyone else. There are losses I still carry, disappointments I never fully recovered from, and versions of myself I quietly mourn. Most days, sadness wins. It sits beside me in quiet rooms, follows me through crowded ones, and colors more of my life than I care to admit. I spent years at war with myself. Picking apart my flaws, magnifying my mistakes, and carrying the quiet suspicion that everyone else had received a map for life that I somehow missed. For the longest time, I thought my sadness was something I had to hide. Something that made me difficult to love, difficult to understand. Yet something in me remains stubbornly soft. Beautiful skies still stop me in my tracks. Small moments of joy still find their way to me. And despite everything, I cannot seem to let go of the belief that there is something worth looking forward to beyond tomorrow. Then, somewhere along the way, a different perspective found its way into my life. And perhaps that is why I dislike myself a little less these days. Not because anything was fixed. Not because the storms disappeared. But because I began to wonder if I had been looking at myself too cruelly all along. The storms are still there. So is the rain. But now, when I catch sight of flowers growing through broken concrete, I think of how resilient beautiful things can be. Including me. M. | wounds & flowers June 2026

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I'm probably the saddest-happiest girl you'll ever know. There are days when the world feels heavier than it ought to, and I find myself exhausted by things that seem effortless for everyone else. There are losses I still carry, disappointments I never fully recovered from, and versions of myself I quietly mourn. Most days, sadness wins. It sits beside me in quiet rooms, follows me through crowded ones, and colors more of my life than I care to admit. I spent years at war with myself. Picking apart my flaws, magnifying my mistakes, and carrying the quiet suspicion that everyone else had received a map for life that I somehow missed. For the longest time, I thought my sadness was something I had to hide. Something that made me difficult to love, difficult to understand. Yet something in me remains stubbornly soft. Beautiful skies still stop me in my tracks. Small moments of joy still find their way to me. And despite everything, I cannot seem to let go of the belief that there is something worth looking forward to beyond tomorrow. Then, somewhere along the way, a different perspective found its way into my life. And perhaps that is why I dislike myself a little less these days. Not because anything was fixed. Not because the storms disappeared. But because I began to wonder if I had been looking at myself too cruelly all along. The storms are still there. So is the rain. But now, when I catch sight of flowers growing through broken concrete, I think of how resilient beautiful things can be. Including me. M. | wounds & flowers June 2026

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There was a time when I believed love should feel the same if it was real. That if it ever softened, became less intense, or stopped looking the way it once did, then something must have been lost along the way. I measured love against its former versions, comparing what was to what is, wondering why it no longer arrived with the same certainty. But perhaps that is the misunderstanding. People think love is supposed to remain the same if it is real. But nothing that lives remain unchanged. Not the seasons. Not the oceans. Not the people who stand beside each other year after year. You could never love the same way twice, not even with the same person. The version of me that loved yesterday is gone now. She left pieces of herself in old conversations, old disappointments, old hopes that never came to pass. And the version of you that receives my love today is not the same person you were either. So of course, the love is different. How could it not be? Love does not stay alive by remaining the same. It stays alive by becoming something new each time we meet each other again. And sometimes, loving well is simply allowing that becoming to happen in its own time. M. | June 2026

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I might not love him more than I have loved before. The intensity is quieter now, softer somehow. It does not arrive like a storm or consume me like a wildfire. It does not shake the ground beneath my feet or leave me breathless with longing. Instead, it feels like calm. It feels like being wanted. I do not love him with the same fierce certainty I once mistook for forever. I love him with all the pain I carry inside me, with all the broken things I have yet to mend, with the scars that still ache when touched and the walls that remain standing in forgotten corners of my soul. I do not love him with only the happy parts of me. I love him with the grief that still lingers. With the loneliness that learned how to survive. With the wounds that are still learning how to smile, even after years of being left thirsty for kindness. This is how I love him. For most of my life, I never truly felt as though I belonged in this world. Many people offered me a place to stay, a seat at their table, a corner where I could rest. They told me I belonged there with them. But belonging often came with conditions. It lasted only as long as I followed their path, spoke their language, or became the version of myself they preferred. The invitation was always waiting to be withdrawn. But he did not do that. He did not ask me to become smaller. He did not ask me to be easier to love. He did not ask me to leave pieces of myself at the door. Instead, he opened his arms like wings and drew me close. And when I stood there, uncertain and ready to leave before I could be left, he simply said, "Stay. We'll find our home together." And for the first time, home did not feel like a place I had to earn. It felt like someone choosing to keep a light on for me, even on the nights I could not find my own way back. M. | this is how I love him June 2026

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I guess some of us are not meant to live soft lives. Maybe not yet. Maybe not ever. But still, something in us keeps reaching for light. Some of us were handed grief too early, betrayal too often, and chaos in places where love should have been. And still, somehow, we are expected to bloom anyway. Yet among the ruins, we remain stubborn enough to keep growing. To become wildflowers in places that were never meant to hold beauty. Maybe that is why I have always loved wildflowers. They grow without asking permission to exist. They soften abandoned places simply by surviving there. I think people like us do the same. We may not have chosen the ground we were planted in, but we grew into something of our own. And for that, I want to say thank you. Thank you for never giving up. Thank you for continuing to create, to love, and to remain gentle even when the world has given you every reason not to. As June begins, may it remind us that growth is still growth, even when it happens quietly. And may us find more reasons to believe that what we have endured is not all there is. M. | To the ones who bloom anyway June 1st, 2026

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