27 Nov

I woke before the light.

The kind of hour where the room feels borrowed.

Thin air.

Unsteady silence.

The ghost of who I used to be still curled somewhere near the bed.

Birthdays used to feel like warnings.

A tally of everything I could not outrun.

A life measured in almosts.

I kept imagining a future where I felt held by something other than fear.

Something other than memory.

Something other than him.

But this morning was different.

Not softer.

Sharper.

Like the world had turned the lights back on and expected me to notice what was left.

And what wasn’t.

I made coffee and the kitchen felt like all the early apartments I ever lived in.

Cheap tiles.

Thin walls.

A quiet that pressed too close.

For a moment I thought I heard the M train in the distance, that low groan that moves through Ridgewood at 3am like a reminder you are alive in a city that does not care either way.

I used to love that sound.

It made me feel anonymous.

It made me feel possible.

There are versions of me still wandering those streets.

The girl clutching hope like a lit match.

The one who tried to make herself small enough to be loved.

The one who thought pain was proof of depth.

I can feel them sometimes.

A flicker under the ribs.

A shadow crossing a window.

A memory that refuses to die cleanly.

Healing is a refusal.

A decision not to return to the rooms that dimmed you.

A slow reassembly of a self no one thought to look for.

A truth you learn to say without whispering.

Another year around the sun and I refuse to wait at any door.

Not for love.

Not for permission.

Not for someone to finally see me.

There is something shifting in me.

Quiet.

Dangerous.

The kind of change that happens once, maybe twice in a lifetime.

I can feel it rising from somewhere I thought was gone.

A pulse.

A clarity.

A hunger I am no longer ashamed of.

I do not know what happens next.

But I know what it feels like.

The way the city feels right before the train arrives.

That split second of tremor in the tracks.

That charged stillness.

That low, electric warning:

watch this space.