Chapter 1 | Entry Four

I'm tired, Moon.

I said everything I needed to say last night. I screamed it, I cried it, I let it pour out of me until there was nothing left but this strange, hollow quiet.

And now I'm just...here.

Still awake. Still alive. Still carrying this light I didn't ask for.

I thought the anger would change something. I thought if I could just say it all, if I could just be that raw, honest, LOUD, maybe you'd answer. Maybe something would change.

But nothing shifted.

The sun still rose somewhere else. The world kept turning. And I'm still here, luminous and alone.

Except...

I don't know. There's something different this morning. Something I don't have words for yet.

I'm sitting near my bedroom window, watching the moon fade as the sky brightens, and I'm noticing my own breath. In and out. This body that held all that rage last night is still here. Still breathing. Still soft in places I thought would harden.

My hands are in my lap, and they're not clenched anymore.

I didn't decide to unclench them. They just... did.

Maybe I don't have to figure it all out right now. Maybe I don't have to know if I'm grateful or furious or heartbroken. Maybe I just have to notice that I'm still breathing. That the anger didn't destroy me. That I can hold this much emotion and not shatter.

I'm not ready to call it a gift yet. I'm not ready to say it was all worth it, that the awakening was the point, that I get to keep the aliveness that woke up.

But I'm also not screaming anymore.

And I don't know what that means, but it feels like something.

Maybe it's just exhaustion. Maybe tomorrow I'll be angry again. Maybe I'll cycle through this a hundred more times before I land anywhere that feels like peace.

But right now, in this moment, I'm just noticing:

I'm still here.

The light didn't go out.

And my hands... are open.

—Still breathing