Midnight. Cool air. Music playing low. A few hard seltzers in.
I’ve been cleaning my RV for hours, not out of obligation, but because something in me needed the order. Needed to make sense of my space the way I’m starting to make sense of myself. I move slow, intentional. Let the rhythm of a good song carry me from one surface to another. Everything I touch reflects something back to me.
This has been a day of quiet clarity. I feel it. Something is shifting. Not all at once — just enough to register the difference. I used to carry so much tension. Now it’s loosening. Not because life got easier, but because I stopped mistaking other people’s confusion for my responsibility.
I’m not panicked, even when the stakes are high.
I’m not shrinking, even when the world stays small.
I’m not apologizing for needing to be real.
What I’ve been through didn’t break me. It burned everything false away.
And now I’m sitting in the afterglow of that fire, chilled can in hand, windows cracked to the night, alone but not lonely. Music threading through the dark like memory.
Somewhere out there, the stories people tell about me are still circulating.
Let them.
I’ve got my own.
I don’t need to be understood anymore.
I just need to stay whole.