I don’t know what comes next. I just know I want to feel soft when I get there.

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about time.

Not because I'm dying, but because life shifts so fast. And I don't know how many more shifts I can take before I forget how to come back to myself. I know we all go eventually. But what's haunting me lately isn't the dying, it's how rarely I feel fully alive. How often I move through days without ever really arriving in them. How quietly time slips away while I’m still waiting to feel like myself again.

Because even the small things like feeding the cat, answering a text, or walking into a room require a kind of emotional code-switching I didn’t consent to. There’s a cost to constantly translating ones’ pain into something palatable. I know what it feels like to lose a whole day to that kind of labor. I know what it’s like to plan for tomorrow and not make it to the desk. I know the rhythm of bargaining. One more hour. One more page. One more try.

It’s not dramatic. It’s just the truth. My body moves slower than my mind, and my ambition has always been louder than my energy. But I still want. I still hope. I still reach.

There’s a version of me that lives in the world untouched. Healthy. Productive. Visible. But she’s not the one writing this. I’m the version who moves through pain. Who forgets words in the middle of a sentence. Who gets three good hours and has to choose between doing laundry or doing art. Who is tired of being tired.

And yet I still care about beauty. I still want to make something worth leaving behind. I still want to write books. Finish poems. Say something that lands in someone’s chest and makes them feel a little less alone.

There’s a particular ache that comes from having more ideas than capacity. I carry whole worlds inside me that may never make it to the page. I grieve them like lost children. And still I wake up trying again.

The emotional wear and tear is real. It’s not just the body that breaks down. It’s the belief. The conviction. The hope that this moment, this breath, this try will matter. I have sat in the quiet, head in my hands, wondering why I feel like I’m always chasing life instead of living it. I have cried over undone lists and unread drafts.

Sometimes I think I’m unlucky.

And then I catch myself. I think of the life I’ve shaped. The tiny miracles I’ve earned with teeth clenched and fists balled and love still beating at the door. I think of the people who see me even when the world doesn’t. I think of the art I’ve made. The resilience I didn’t want but now wear like a second skin.

This is not a soft life. But it’s a real one. And there’s something sacred in that.

I have no children. A failed marriage. I am still not published in the traditional sense (though I am still working on it). Some days I feel so deeply unlovable. Not because I don’t have love to give. But because I don’t know how to ask someone to walk with me through the chaos that is my erratic life. It feels like an imposition. A warning. An unfair exchange.

And yes, I wish to be loved. In a non-platonic sense. And that has felt even further out of reach than the rest of my dreams combined as of late.

I’m not trying to be a brand. I’m simply trying to be here. Be present. To make this life mine. Even if it’s smaller than I once imagined. Even if it’s quiet. Even if nobody’s clapping.

But even quiet dreams want to be witnessed.

Some days I feel invisible. Like the algorithm doesn’t see people like me. Like I aged out of the dream before I got a chance to live it. Like ambition is something I’m supposed to outgrow with grace. But I haven’t.

Before I die, I want to stop apologizing for wanting more.

I want to stop hiding how hard some days are. I want to stop measuring my worth by how productive I am. I want to believe that art made in the margins is still art. That love given quietly still counts. That showing up for myself even when it’s hard is enough.

I want to trust that the words I’ve carried all this time weren’t for nothing.

And if someone finds them. If someone finds me. Maybe they’ll feel a little less like they’re shouting into the void too.

I’m still here. Not fixed. Not sure. Not successful by most standards. But I’m writing this. Which means I’m trying.

And trying I think is its own kind of faith.

And if this is the legacy. Unfinished. Unseen. Sincere. Maybe this is what it looks like to stay true, even when no one’s looking.

Here’s the truth I’ve been writing my way toward.

Maybe tender is the bravest thing I have left because it’s the one thing no one ever gave me freely. And maybe that’s the reason I’m still here. Still writing. Still dreaming. Still reaching. Because I want to live the kind of life where softness doesn’t have to come last. Where hope isn’t rationed. Where I don’t have to hide how much I still want to be loved. And if all I leave behind is something half-spoken, something I kept writing through the noise, and something that felt like me even when I was breaking, then maybe that was always the point.

Maybe what I want before dying is simply this. To believe that I lived as someone who kept going anyway. Someone who reached for softness even through the static. Someone who stayed kind. Who stayed awake. Who stayed true to herself.

Still here. Still her. Still home to myself.