Some mornings, the sun rises, but I don't. The light spills across my room like it's looking for me, and I hide beneath the sheets, ashamed that I don't want to be found.

People say "it'll pass," but they don't see how still the air feels when your own thoughts sound like whispers in a locked room. They don't see the effort it takes to brush your teeth, to answer a text, to keep breathing in a world that feels heavier than your chest.

It's not sadness. It's silence. It's not weakness. It's weight. It's the thousand tiny deaths of every version of you that once believed in light.

And yet, some days, you lift your head. Not to smile, not to fight, but just to try.

And maybe that's how healing begins, not in loud victories, but in small moments of choosing to stay. In learning that rest is not failure, and asking for help is not defeat.

Because beneath the fog, your heart is still reaching, toward warmth, toward softness, toward you.

And one day, you'll look back and realize the weight you carried was never meant to break you, only to teach you how strong your tenderness could be.