Authenticity

I no longer craved the glow of constant happiness.  I grew tired of performing positivity, of shining when I was crumbling inside.  I wanted to feel real, raw, unfiltered, undone.  So I stopped running.  I stopped caring what people thought. I let the anger come, the grief, the loneliness, every shadow I once silenced.  I faced the truth I had buried beneath my smiles.  No more pretending to have it all figured out.

No more holding it together just to make others comfortable.  I let myself fall apart messy, loud, honest. In the wreckage, I found space to breathe.

There was freedom in the breaking, in the brutal clarity of self.  I accepted the chaos in me, the wounds within me, and in the broken world around me. And in doing so, I finally began to heal not in spite of the pain, but because of it.