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Hey, can we talk about hope? Just those little wishes for the things we still struggle to talk about. Let me share mine with you. Maybe, somewhere between these words, you will find yours too. I hope I live long enough to see the day when taking care of our minds is regarded with the same compassion as taking care of our bodies. Where I live, conversations about mental health are still often met with hesitation. Sometimes with disbelief. Sometimes with judgment. Invisible pain is too often treated as though it is less real simply because it cannot be seen. Perhaps it comes from not understanding. Perhaps it comes from the way many of us were raised, where emotional struggles were expected to be endured quietly, hidden behind a smile, or simply prayed away. Faith can be a source of strength. It has been for many. But I hope we also come to understand that faith and seeking support are not opposites. Giving or receiving compassion, understanding, and the support we need is not a sign of weak faith. It is an act of care. Just as we would not ask someone with a broken bone to heal through willpower alone, we should not expect a struggling mind to recover through silence. I hope one day no one feels the need to invent a physical illness because it is easier to explain than saying, "I'm not emotionally well today." I hope asking for a mental health day is met with the same understanding as asking for sick leave because of a fever. I hope our workplaces become kinder. Our families become gentler. Our friendships become safer. I don't hope for a world without depression, anxiety, or heartbreak. Some things will always be part of being human. I hope instead for a world where no one feels ashamed to say, "I'm struggling." A world where we stop questioning the reality of another person's pain simply because we cannot see it for ourselves, and where no one has to suffer in silence just to be believed. Understanding begins the moment we stop asking whether someone's pain is real, and start asking how we can help. Perhaps that is the future I hope we grow into. Not one without suffering, but one where compassion meets people before judgment does. Because an aching mind deserves the same care as an aching body. Both deserve rest. Both deserve the chance to heal. M. July 2026


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Love is like a river of tears that will flow whenever you're not here There are days when I see nothing but rain There are days when I just feel so much pain "I miss you" somehow flies right off my lips and so once again I'm left wishing for you to be here There are days when I just miss you so much there are days when I just long for your touch "I love you" somehow flies right off my lips  and so once again I'm left crying for you....

The story continues, in the spaces between what is and what was. Read if it calls to you, skip if not. Thank you for keeping me company. ************************* Part 6 As my eyes lulled to sleep, I heard the night sing a wordless song of farewell to the lost love and to the world that I left behind, a strange realm that exists outside of time, where you and I forever lived under the aligned sun and moon, in the sky adorned with dancing stars. /// Mornings came differently now. The light was sharper, colder, as if reminding me that the world I had known in the garden belonged only to memory. I tried to hold onto it, but life pressed in with its routines, its obligations, and its quiet insistence that I move forward. In my darkest hours, I wished for an ending, my own ending, and for the garden to remain sealed in its realm, forever beyond my reach. I moved to a new city, rented a small apartment, and began to write. Words poured out of me like wind through white clouds, pages filled with longing, fragments of laughter, and sunlight. Friends and my mother checked in often, their concern gentle and persistent. They seemed to wonder what had truly happened, why I would sometimes grow distant in the middle of a conversation, as though some part of me had drifted elsewhere. They never knew of the nights I screamed and cried in my sleep, haunted by what I had lost. I could only smile, brush off their questions, and carry on as if nothing had broken inside me. Still, no matter where I went, no matter how far I wandered, I remembered the garden. I remembered the way the wind played with his hair, the quiet sway of the flowers, the golden evening light that had made everything feel almost sacred. Sometimes, I wondered if it had all been real, or if it was a dream that clung too stubbornly to me to let go. When I could no longer hold the longing, I returned. The city felt distant, the world around me muted, as I passed through the familiar gate. The garden stretched before me, pale and quiet, waiting as if it had always known I would come again. I walked slowly among the flowers, my fingers brushing their petals, my heart aching with the sadness that this could be the last time I would see it, and part of me wished it would disappear to end the pain. Inside the mansion, the gallery revealed itself once more. There, among the familiar paintings and photographs, I found new images of him and her, smiling in scenes that could never belong to me, moments of happiness that had unfolded without me. Each frame whispered the truth I had tried so long to resist. A life that had moved on without me. I stepped back toward the gate. With a slow, deliberate motion, I closed it behind me. When I looked back, the garden had vanished, folded into memory as though it had never been there. And yet, I felt it in the quiet pulse of my chest, in the words I would write, in the night that sang its endless song. The garden was gone, but our story, in some fragile and unbroken way, lived on within me. I turned away from where the garden had been, the wind brushing softly against my face, carrying the faintest memory of petals and sunlight. Life waited beyond the mansion, in the city, in the pages I wrote, in the quiet conversations of friends and my mother who still worried for me. And yet, sometimes at night, when the world grows still and the stars align just so, I feel the pulse of that other place. A world outside of time, a world where he and I had once existed, suspended between sun and moon. I do not know if I will return, or if that world will ever open its gates to me again. But I know this. The story we shared is not finished. Somewhere, in the threads of memory, in the quiet breath of the night, it waits. And I wait with it, knowing that some endings are only the beginning of another chapter. End of Part 6 ©️ M. | September 2025 Part 5 https://ift.tt/fGBwXpQ

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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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