Blurred Days

The clock blinks,

but I can’t read its face—

hours melt into wrapping paper scraps

and half-finished conversations.

Bare

I stand without cover,

no shine, no mask.

Just skin,

lined and soft,

telling stories I didn’t ask to write.

To take the raw sinew of art, therapy, and healing and weave them into something whole, something alive. To create and to heal, to let both acts intertwine like roots growing through the cracks of broken stone. One step at a time.

Resilience. That’s the word that sticks with me tonight. We’re capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for. I’ve always known that, but tonight, it feels real. It feels close.

They bend over backward for everyone else, twisting themselves into knots just to fit into what others expect. They feel the tension, the exhaustion of constantly trying to please everyone, and yet, they don’t know how to stop. There’s a deep fear there, too, a quiet terror of what might happen if they finally stand their ground. Maybe it’s a fear of being rejected or upsetting someone, or maybe they’ve experienced that kind of rejection before, and it haunts them.

I’m realizing now that the story I’ve been aching to tell all these years isn’t just mine. It’s the stories of all the people I’ve met, their lives entwined with mine, their histories bleeding into the fabric of my own.

The kind of memory that cuts you down, not gently, but with the sharp edge of something you thought you’d left behind.

But once you start running, you learn that stopping is the real fear. Stopping means facing the wreckage, looking in the mirror and seeing the ruins of what you once were. I knew—God, I knew—that if I slowed down, I’d hate what I saw.

But writing is different for me. There’s nothing abstract about putting my thoughts and feelings down, claiming them, and owning them. There’s no distance, no mask. It’s just you, laid bare on the page. And maybe it’s time I stop hiding behind the layers of abstraction, time I stand behind my words the way I do my art. Time to take ownership of what I think and feel—no more masks, no more distance. Just truth.