Sometimes I spend so much of myself turning other people’s darkness into light that I forget about the quiet storm growing inside me. While making sure everyone else is okay, I slowly lose the parts of myself that needed the most care.
Maybe that’s why I’ve been longing for someone to ask, “How are you?” Not as a habit. Not to fill a silence. But the kind of question that waits for the truth. The kind that can hear even the words I never manage to say.
Not long ago, I believed I was weak. Then I paused and looked back at everything life had asked me to survive—the nights I cried in silence, the mornings I still chose to keep going, the moments I had no one but myself. That’s when I realized I had never been weak. I had simply been exhausted. I mistook being tired for being fragile.
And maybe my greatest mistake was loving everyone else more than I ever loved myself. I gave away the kindness, patience, and compassion that I should have saved a little of for my own heart.
Perhaps healing begins the moment we stop abandoning ourselves just to make everyone else feel whole.
