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não, as faltas não vão doendo menos♥️

it won’t stop.

not the ringing.

not the static breathing through the walls.

not the way the screen flickers like it’s trying to remember your face.

you think you turned it off.

you think you’re safe in the dark.

but the dark is where it learned your name.

seven days was never a warning.

Well, good luck babe.

Faith was the soil I grew in. It gave me words for hope, for meaning, for love. It also handed me a quiet list of things I was not supposed to feel, not supposed to want, not supposed to be.

So when certain feelings started rising in me, steady and bright, I treated them like intruders. I tried to confess them out of existence. Tried to bargain them away. I carried guilt for emotions that had never harmed anyone, like my heart itself was something I had to apologize for.

But feelings do not disappear just because they are inconvenient. They stay. They echo. They show up in the way your whole body softens around certain people, in the way some connections feel like gravity instead of effort. No matter how much I tried to rename it admiration, phase, confusion, my heart kept circling the same truth like a compass that refused to point anywhere else.

At some point, the question changed. I stopped asking who I was supposed to be and started asking who I already was when no one else was in the room. That question felt like stepping into deep water without knowing how to swim. But it also felt like the first honest breath I had taken in years. Terrifying and relieving at the same time.

It hurt to admit I had been negotiating against myself for so long. Hurt to see how many dreams I quietly folded up and put away because they did not fit inside the version of life I was told was holy, safe, correct. There is a specific kind of grief that comes from knowing you abandoned your own heart just to be acceptable.

But there is also something powerful about choosing yourself anyway. About saying maybe I am not the disaster I thought I was. Maybe the feelings I kept trying to silence were not flaws, but signals. Maybe the way I love, the way I feel drawn, the way my chest lights up around certain futures is not a mistake in the design.

The guilt is constant. Not because I did something. Just because I feel something. Like my heart is committing a crime by beating the way it naturally does. I carry this quiet fear that if I let myself fully want what I want, I will lose everything. Approval. Belonging. Maybe even God.

So I stay in between. Not honest. Not at peace. Just surviving in the middle of a tug of war between my truth and my fear. Every time I get close to admitting what is real, I pull back. I tell myself it is strength. It feels more like betrayal. Self betrayal dressed up as faith, discipline, maturity.

And I am tired. Tired of fighting feelings that do not leave. Tired of calling my own dreams dangerous. Tired of shrinking my future down to something that fits the rules but not my soul. But being tired is not the same as being brave. So I stay here. Knowing. And not choosing.

People say the truth sets you free. Right now, the truth just stands in front of me like an open door I am too scared to walk through. Because once I do, I cannot pretend anymore. I cannot go back to not knowing. I cannot rebuild the version of me everyone understands.

So I hover at the doorway.

Hand almost on the handle.

Heart loud. Fear louder.