In the Quiet of Becoming

Not all journeys take place on the open road; some are mapped within the heart.

I’ve learned more about myself

in the silence between breaths,

in the stillness of thoughts I once avoided.

I’ve felt the weight of habits,

heavy as the sky before rain,

carried by the winds of fear and old wounds.

It’s been painful,

pruning the parts of me

that no longer serve

and realizing

how deeply rooted they are,

how long they’ve lived in me

without permission.

I’ve started to sit with my emotions,

to let them wash over me

like waves on a shore

instead of running from the tide.

I thought I understood them,

but I was only skimming the surface.

Now, I try to name them,

these nameless things inside,

to understand their origins

as if learning to read

a language I never knew I was missing.

A foreign tongue I was never taught.

And I am not perfect,

not by any stretch.

I still avoid some emotions,

the sharp ones, the dark ones.

But I pause now,

before my “lizard brain” takes control,

before I react

and lose what’s left of me.

It’s exhausting,

this constant rethinking,

this recalibration of my responses

to the world around me.

But when I pause,

the fog clears.

I feel more grounded,

more real.

My relationships,

tangled at first,

are now more authentic,

more raw.

But some days,

just being present

feels like an act of courage.

I struggle to sit with myself

in the discomfort.

And yet,

there is progress in the struggle,

in the tension,

in the unspoken understanding

that the journey is still unfolding.

And then, money.

A new wave,

swamping the shore again.

Confronting my ignorance,

I found a storm inside,

anger, shame, fear—

all crashing together

in a flood of old memories,

old wounds.

But I took a breath,

took a step back,

let the emotions run their course.

And I saw,

with clarity,

how much of me I had been avoiding,

how much of my life

I had been running from.

I’ve been learning,

slowly,

how to manage money,

how to see it

not as a storm

but as something to understand,

to respect,

to guide.

I’ve been learning to handle food,

to untangle the comfort it offers

from the comfort I seek

in other places.

And in this,

I take small steps.

I don’t have all the answers,

and I may never.

But I know I am evolving,

piece by piece,

learning to be my true self,

slowly,

steadily,

in the quiet spaces between

the past and the future,

in the tension

of becoming who I am meant to be

.