Life goes by

I have so much inside my head that feels trapped. Thoughts I don’t know how to say out loud. Feelings I second-guess before I even allow myself to feel them. Questions I keep circling back to because I don’t know if I’m allowed to ask them. And somehow, I can feel happier than I have in years while also carrying this underlying feeling of fear. That’s the part I don’t know how to explain. How can something feel so beautiful and so frightening at the same time? I’ve become very good at trying to do everything right. Trying harder. Giving more. Explaining myself. Being understanding. Being patient. Making compromises. Trying to anticipate what someone needs before they even have to ask. And yet somehow, I still end up wondering whether I’m enough. There are moments when I feel like I’m finally doing everything I’m supposed to do, only to realize that the definition of “enough” has somehow changed again. So I try harder. And then harder than that. Until I don’t even know...

The Girl Who Rose From It Music has always been my heart’s voice when nothing else works. When my feelings become too heavy to explain, I put them into a melody. Somehow, the beat gives everything inside me somewhere to go. Things that feel impossible to say out loud seem to flow a little softer through music. Lately, even that has become difficult. I wish you could see me. Not the version of me you think you know. Not the version you’ve decided is obsessed with drama or conflict. I wish you could see the real me—the breaking me. Because I hate fighting. I hate conflict. I hate feeling like I’m constantly defending my intentions, explaining my feelings, or trying to prove that I’m not secretly trying to cause a problem. I wish I could talk without feeling like the other person already knows what I’m going to say before I’ve even finished saying it. Maybe that’s part of what makes this so complicated. We have similar lives in some ways, but we came from different experiences. T...