Category: Real life

Doing hard things when your heart is elsewhere is one of the most exhausting acts of adulthood.

There are moments when your spirit has already left the room. You’ve renounced a situation internally emotionally, energetically, spiritually but your body still has to show up. Duty calls you into places you’ve already outgrown. And no, you can’t always just walk away. Not yet.

So you stay.

Not because you’re weak.

Not because you lack courage.

But because responsibility, timing, and reality sometimes require endurance before release.

This is the part no one romanticizes: continuing on while your passion lives somewhere else. Knowing you’re meant for more, yet tending to what’s in front of you because walking out prematurely would cost you more than staying a little longer.

I’ve done this in every form

a job that drained me,

a relationship that had run its course,

friendships that no longer fit the version of me I was becoming.

And here I am again, standing at a crossroads, holding a double-edged sword. One side is survival. The other is vision. Both are sharp. Both require intention.

What keeps me moving forward is this:

I know this is temporary.

There’s already a countdown in my mind.

The work I’m doing now is not wasted it’s preparation.

Sometimes thriving doesn’t look like joy.

Sometimes it looks like discipline.

Sometimes it’s simply keeping your word to yourself while you build the bridge out.

If you’ve ever stayed somewhere longer than your soul wanted to, I see you. And I’d love to know what was it for you? A job, a relationship, a friendship? What did you learn while you waited for your moment to step forward?

This isn’t the end of the story.

It’s the part where the groundwork is being laid.

I sat down with the intention to write a poem.

Not to impress, not to perform  just to let something honest come through.

But almost immediately, the questions arrived.

Is it good enough?

Will it be understood?

Will it reach anyone at all?

What starts as a desire to express something real can so easily turn into self-surveillance. I wondered if my words sounded cliché, or worse self important.

As if wanting to learn the language of poetry required permission. As if feeling deeply was something to apologize for.

So instead of writing, I stared at the page.

Negotiated with myself.

Edited thoughts before they could even breathe.

Days passed like this. Pages stayed empty. Not because there was nothing inside me  but because I forgot why I started writing in the first place.

The truth is, my words were never meant to convince anyone of anything. They weren’t meant to be understood by everyone, or even received at all.

They were meant to be a form of healing.

And they still are.

When I remember that, the page softens.

The pressure dissolves.

And the poem writes itself not for an audience, but for my own becoming.