I have loved stars that collapsed into themselves. People who once burned with the kind of brilliance that made you believe in something bigger—something divine. They carried light in their hands, in their words, in the way they saw the world with wild, unfiltered wonder. But like Icarus, like Lucifer, like every fallen thing that ever thought itself untouchable, they flew too high, reached too far, believed themselves invincible.

The world is uncomfortable with what it cannot see. We are taught to rally against cancer, to wage wars on failing organs, but we do not know how to hold space for the quiet, interior battles. We turn away from suffering that does not bleed, does not show itself in scars and statistics. And yet, pain is pain. It does not lessen because it is unseen.

My heart is dying, but not in the romantic way. Not in the way they write about in poems. It is shriveling, it is gasping, it is clenched so tight it cannot beat properly. They tell me the name for it—stress cardiomyopathy—so neat, so clinical. A heart giving up, not from clots or cholesterol, but from grief, from strain, from the sheer unbearable weight of being alive.

I am learning the girl I once was. Her face, her hands, her voice appear in old photographs, in journals with ink bleeding like bruises. She startles me. Her mania hangs in the air like smoke; her suffering is sharp, unyielding. I read her pages and shiver at the clarity of her terror and courage.

What is better: uncomfortable truth or comfortable lies? Every truth is a kindness, even if it makes others uncomfortable. Every untruth is an unkindness, even if it makes others comfortable.

The future is, as it always has been, an open question. It holds both promise and uncertainty, joy and hardship. Perhaps the key lies in accepting that life will continue to ebb and flow. Stability may never be a permanent fixture, but it doesn’t have to be. What matters is the ability to adapt, to cherish moments of calm, and to remain hopeful in the face of change.

"I am" is not merely a statement of existence; it’s an invitation to explore what it means to be. This project is not about crafting a neat, cohesive narrative of my life. Instead, it’s about embracing the messiness, the contradictions, and the unresolved questions. It’s about finding the threads of continuity in a life that often felt disjointed.