Perhaps, Life Didn't End.

I don't know how it feels to be free anymore— free from expectations, judgment, the weight of pressure, and the ache of loneliness. I thought life ended when I began to notice the shift— from ease to struggle, from laughter to silence. Wandering eyes became a threat. Growing up? It wasn't golden. It was fire, and no one warned me that it would burn this much. I longed for the future, only to mourn the past. Change after change— a slow unraveling. I lost people I never thought I would, and in the end, I stood alone. But in solitude, I met myself. And in meeting myself, I began to understand— maybe change isn’t cruel, maybe it's necessary. Not all change is grief. Some of it is growth. Perhaps those cracks in my world were openings— letting in light to show me there is more: more love, more dreams, more people who stay, and yes, more pain too— but with it, more wisdom. Perhaps life didn’t end when my skin broke out. Perhaps it didn’t end when I lost those I loved, or when I forgot my own worth. No— perhaps that’s when life began. Perhaps, it started with change.