it's been warm lately.

life feels like a hug

I love that I can fail at things and I’m still happy to be here. I love waking up, still moving and still finding small things that don’t hurt to hold.

I used to think I was always ready to die young.

I would move through things swiftly, because to me, I have no time to waste. When entering moments, I would think of how much I’ll miss this when I am gone, and if these moments will remain the same when I’m gone to never return. I would not take off my shoes too soon, in case death decided to claim me before I crossed the door.

I was always prepared for a departure. It was always felt like death was just 6 feet away from me, and if it came closer, would I run or just let it do its thing? I always feel like I’m running out of time, so I had to finish everything in time, even when nothing had started yet.

People would ask me about the future. Five years from now. Ten. I would pause, pretend to think, like I was searching for something far away. But the answer was always there, bright and simple in my head: I dont think I would be here by then.

But you know, something in me never agreed, because sometimes and some days, without meaning to, I catch myself waiting for the next day. I lay out new clothes. I think of my family and my friends and feel something soft in my chest. I’m really excited for the next day; my face is so flushed. I smile before I remember I’m not supposed to expect anything.

And it confuses me.

Who am I, if not a terrible liar?

I have seen myself leaving this life a hundred times, in so many different ways; it has stretched too long, and still, somehow, I find myself here every day, still looking at things, still feeling them, still finding myself wanting to stay.

It’s absurd to feel so tired of carrying yourself and still hold on. To feel the weight of being, and yet not let it go. To sit with something that aches and still choose, in the smallest ways, not to leave it behind.

Sometimes it feels like weakness, like I am just a coward who wants to run away from my purpose in life. I am fondling something that hurts me, staying too close to the very thing that exhausts me.

But sometimes, like this week, it feels light, it feels like something else, so much warm. It feels like I have no burden in life, and I realize I am not as ready to disappear as I once believed.

Life feels like this writing, I dont know what I am going to put in the next line, it just reminds me that I don’t have to decide who I am all at once and enjoy the progress.

I think it’s dangerous not to have hope. but hope feels heavy sometimes. So its better to reach for smaller things. a little something to keep me awe, something small enough to make me just stay.

I’ve laughed a lot lately. It felt so good to let loose and feel loose, and for a second, I wasn’t thinking about anything that’s followed me around. I wasn’t thinking about everything I have to do, everything I haven’t done, everything that has been done, everything that needs to be done. not the past, not the cirnge thing I did two months ago. For a long time, I felt so unhaunted. It felt so simple to stand in the sunlight with my friends and not need anything, and to be surrounded by their beautiful laughs.

for a second, I wasn’t living off something that already burned out. I wasn’t carrying old light, trying to just make it through the day.

I was here.
I was whole in that moment.

And I was my sun.