This year didn’t just bruise me
it hollowed me out in ways I never saw coming.
Not because of a man.
Not because of another woman.
Not because of betrayal or endings.
But because of my children.
Because of the quiet dream I held for them
a dream of a home that stayed whole,
a mother and father under the same roof,
a little world where they never had to learn what leaving feels like.
I’m not ashamed to say it:
when I learned that another baby was coming into the picture; twins, a whole new family forming somewhere else
it wasn’t jealousy that hit me.
It wasn’t longing.
It wasn’t wanting him back.
It was the grief of a mother who looked at her son
and realized he would never have the storybook childhood she prayed over him.
It was that sharp, breath stealing ache of realizing:
my baby won’t have the family I fought so hard to keep together for him.
I felt that same ache years ago with my daughter
that guilt, that heaviness,
that whisper in the back of my mind that said,
“You failed her.”
And when life repeated itself
when I realized my son wouldn’t have that perfect home either
the guilt came back sharper, louder, crueler.
I felt like I failed twice.
Even though deep down I know I didn’t.
Even though I gave everything I had.
Even though I stayed through storms
and left only when it was the only way to save myself.
But a mother’s heart doesn’t listen to logic.
It listens to the dreams she built in silence.
This year, I grieved a version of motherhood I never got to live.
Not because I wasn’t enough
but because I was never meant to shrink myself into a home that wasn’t safe for my soul.
And while I was grieving all that,
life kept throwing people at me
people who came and went like passing storms,
people who touched my life without ever choosing to stay,
people who left me drained, confused, or wondering why I was never the one anyone held onto fully.
It felt like every time I tried to stand up, another wave hit.
Every time I tried to open my heart, someone walked out.
Every time I tried to hope, life asked me to let go again.
But in the middle of all the heartbreaks,
the goodbyes,
the almosts and never were’s,
something unexpected happened:
I grew.
I grew into a mother who loves fiercely,
even while healing wounds no one sees.
I grew into a woman who can hold both guilt and grace in the same hands
and still show up for her children with a full heart.
I grew into someone who learned that
you don’t have to give your kids a perfect home
you just have to give them a peaceful one.
And that peace…
came from walking away from everything that hurt me.
Now, standing at the edge of a new year,
I feel exhausted
not weak, just worn
from carrying dreams that were never mine to keep.
But I also feel ready.
Ready in a way I haven’t felt in years.
This year broke me open.
Next year, I bloom
for me,
for my daughter,
for my son,
for the version of us that deserves the peace we fought for.
Tag: faith
-
-
He came into my life quietly, like a storm rolling in under soft skies. At first, it was light, easy, a spark that felt like a promise. A message here, a glance there, the kind of beginning that makes you wonder what it could become. It was soft. I was soft.
But somewhere along the way, softness turned into chaos.
It became a game neither of us admitted we were playing. I would spiral, drunk off my emotions, off the longing, off the way he knew how to show up just enough to keep me tethered. He would let me unravel, let me spill out in messy paragraphs of midnight confessions, and he would take it. He would take all of it, responding just enough, never too much, never too little. He would stay.
We would dance in circles, burning through the same conversation on different days. Me, screaming in silence for him to prove me wrong, to prove that he could be more. Him, showing up when it was convenient, when the pull of me was too loud to ignore, when the silence from me became heavy enough to make him move.
And somehow, we never stop. We never let go.
Ten months of this. Ten months of push, pull, crash, burn, repeat. Ten months of “come over,” “I miss you,” “I can’t do this anymore,” “okay, see you soon.” Ten months of stolen moments that end as quickly as they begin. Ten months of me telling myself that this is just what it is, of him taking what he needs, of me giving it, of him letting me feel like maybe, just maybe, I’m the exception, only to remind me that I’m not.
It’s toxic, the way we orbit each other.
It’s the way he texts back after I blow up his phone, like nothing happened, like my breakdowns are just background noise to the quiet chaos we share. It’s the way he hugs me before he leaves, the way he kisses me softly after making me feel like nothing, the way he reminds me without words that he’ll always come back because he knows I’ll open the door.
It’s the way I hate it, but crave it. The way he hates it, but stays.
We are toxic. He and I, we are a war disguised as routine. A battlefield of unspoken words and unmet needs, a graveyard of promises neither of us made, but both of us keep stepping over. It is the kind of connection that feels like a cigarette you can’t quit, the kind that burns you slow, that leaves you coughing, but keeps you reaching for one more drag.
It is wanting him when he is absent, and resenting him when he is present. It is knowing that he won’t change, and refusing to let him go. It is him knowing that I won’t stop trying, and refusing to give me more. It is a cycle. It is a sickness. It is an addiction dressed up as a connection.
It’s the way we keep doing this, over and over, as if we’re waiting for the other to end it first, as if we are testing who will walk away, who will stop replying, who will let the door close. Neither of us do. We let it hang open, wide enough to crawl back through, just enough to keep the tie alive, just enough to keep the damage going.
This is what it is. A toxic, chaotic, unending, twisted dance between two people who don’t know how to let each other go.
-
There’s a kind of ache that doesn’t bleed anymore but still begs to be touched.
That’s what he became, the scab. The one I kept picking.
Not because I loved the pain.
But because, somehow, reopening it felt safer than letting it disappear.
He wasn’t the wound.
He was the illusion of closure, a temporary shield over something much deeper.
Something I didn’t want to face.
Maybe, deep down, I wasn’t really reaching for him.
Maybe I was still reaching for the one before.
The one who broke me so quietly I never heard myself shatter.
And in my confusion, I told myself that touching the scab would somehow bring the ghost back to life.
Like maybe if I could just feel something, I wouldn’t feel so abandoned by everything.
But that’s not healing. That’s self harm with pretty hands.
Because neither of them held me with intention.
They were both just moments.
One cut me wide open.
The other… came with bandages but no stitching thread.
And I kept going back.
Again. And again.
Not because it felt good, but because it felt familiar.
But now I see it for what it is:
Every time I return to what isn’t mine, I delay what’s trying to find me.
Every time I revisit what I already survived, I push away what could actually heal me.
I don’t want to carry pain just because I’m used to the weight.
I don’t want to keep holding onto half love, half-effort, half-meaning.
I want wholeness.
I want peace that doesn’t ask me to beg for it.
I want to wake up one day and not remember how it felt to constantly ache for someone who never reached back.
So I’m done picking the scab.
I’m letting it heal; all of it.
Not into something hard and bitter, but into something sacred.
Something soft again. Mine again.
Because I deserve to be found, and seen; by someone who doesn’t have to hurt me first.
And I can’t receive that if I’m still clinging to what already let me go.
So this chapter ends like this:
Not with fire. Not with screaming. Not with closure.
But with me , choosing peace over patterns.
Choosing me over memory. -
There’s a baby being born today.
And it’s not mine.
It’s not my moment, not my miracle, not my name whispered into the hush of a hospital room.
But still, I feel it
like a tremor under my skin,
like a thread snapping somewhere I can’t reach.I don’t know why it hurts like this.
Only that it does.Maybe it’s because I thought I’d matter.
Even just a little.
That somehow, some part of me would still live in the echo of this new beginning.
But I don’t.
I’ve been erased so quietly it almost feels surgical.And I’m tired of pretending it doesn’t crush me.
Today, I miss a man I didn’t even love… not really.
But he felt like a bandage in the shape of a body.
He laid over the wounds Dean left and pretended to be enough
and I let him.
I wanted to be touched by someone who didn’t come with ghosts.
And for a while, he made me forget that I was bleeding.But now, I want him in the worst way.
Not because I love him,
but because I miss the illusion of being wanted.I want his silence to break, even if it’s only with a half-hearted ‘hey.’
I want him to notice my absence.
I want him to ache, just once, the way I do.I know he wasn’t mine.
He was never meant to stay.
But today…
he feels like the absence I didn’t prepare for.
And him… the one who still haunts me?
He’s having a baby today.
A piece of him entering the world,
while I stay quiet in the shadows of a story I wasn’t invited into.We once dreamed about this.
Not this baby, not that life
but the idea of something that could grow between us.
Something real.
Something sacred.Now he’s watching someone else give birth to a life I’ll never touch.
And I can’t help but wonder if he remembers me
if somewhere between the sterile hospital lights and the weight of a newborn in his arms,
he thinks about the girl who carried his chaos,
the one who never asked for anything but truth.I wonder if he feels my absence like a ghost in the room.
Or if he’s finally learned how to forget me.Either way,
today he became a father again.
And I became something quieter.
Something unmentioned.
Something left behind.
Grief doesn’t scream today.
It hums.
It settles behind my ribs like smoke.
It curls into my throat and doesn’t ask to be swallowed.
It just stays.
Like it knows I won’t tell it to leave.I haven’t cried in a few days.
I thought maybe that meant I was healing.
But today I realized
I was just holding my breath.And now I’m letting myself break.
I don’t want comfort.
I don’t want words.
I don’t want to be told I’ll be okay.I just want to sit in the wreckage of this day and feel every single jagged edge of it.
I want to bleed if I have to.
I want to let the ache hollow me out if it means something new might grow there someday.I don’t know what tomorrow looks like.
I don’t even know what tonight holds.But I know I can’t hold this in anymore.
So I’m letting it pour.
The grief.
The ache.
The longing.
The loss of something I never really had to begin with.
Today, a child was born.
And I felt the universe close a door I had been holding open with both hands
trailofchapters 