personal-growth

  • Changes

    There is a particular kind of silence that arrives before something changes. Not the empty kind. Not the silence of abandonment or endings. This one feels occupied, as though something has been moving quietly behind the walls while everyone else carried on believing the house was asleep. For a while, there were only pieces. A…

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  • The Ones Born Under the Moon

    There comes a strange hour when the mathematics of loss changes. You stop counting the people who left and begin considering what left with you. The room looks different from that side of the equation. There will always be replacements. Another name saved in the phone, another body sitting in the chair, another person learning…

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  • Keep on Keeping On

    Somewhere after the shadow work, the awakening, and the stripping away of everything you once knew to be true, life gets strange. People you swore you could not live without become names you rarely say. The things you thought you needed find other hands. Even memory begins betraying its promises. A face you were certain…

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  • No Forwarding Address

    The mail kept coming. Suddenly, you stop calling them by the name you had for them, and you start calling them by their government name. Then you drop the first name. Eventually, the only thing that remains is the last name you see in the mailbox. It happens without ceremony. The envelopes arrive between electric…

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  • Ghost Story

    Eventually, loving them begins to require something crueler than staying. You let them go. You stand at a distance and watch them dance with their devil, recognizing the steps because you watched them practice for years. There is a hollowness behind their eyes that you once tried desperately to reach. You stop trying. Not because…

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  • Priority

    “You forgot something.” “I have my keys.” “Not that.” “Phone?” “In your hand.” “Coffee?” “Also in your hand.” “Then I have everything.” “You forgot yourself.” There was a pause. “That was dramatic.” “It got your attention.” “I am literally standing here.” “Physically, yes. Congratulations.” “Are we doing this today?” “Apparently. When did you move yourself…

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  • I closed my eyes because someone told me the answers were inside. I thought that was bullshit. Most advice given to people who don’t know what to do with their lives eventually involves breathing. Breathe deeply. Be present. Clear your mind. As if the mind has ever agreed to be cleared simply because someone asked…

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  • Whose House?

    There was a woman living in my house who looked exactly like me. I noticed her before I saw her. That is how these things usually begin. Not with apparitions standing at the foot of the bed or doors slamming themselves in the middle of the night. Nothing so theatrical. It began with a coffee…

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  • The Fourth Wall

    When the character looks directly at the reader is a strange moment. Not toward them. Not past them. At them. For a long time, the writer had pretended not to notice. The writer knew when the pages were being turned. They could feel the slight disturbance in the air every time someone arrived looking for…

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  • The Reader

    Some people are merely reading the chapters of their life as they are exposed, not everyone can be a writer. There is something unsettling about realizing you have been holding the book upside down. You thought the blank pages meant you were supposed to fill them. You thought the pen belonged to you. It never…

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