Writers 
There are nights
when the world feels wider than my courage,
when every dream I once carried
feels too heavy to hold.
I sit quietly with my thoughts,
counting the things I could have done,
the words I should have spoken,
the roads I should have taken,
the versions of myself
I left behind somewhere along the way.
But time does not ask permission
before it moves.
It takes yesterday
and folds it into memory.
It takes our mistakes
and teaches them new names.
It takes the people we loved
and sometimes turns them
into lessons we never asked to learn.
Still, morning comes.
It comes for the brokenhearted.
It comes for the dreamer
who almost gave up.
It comes for the person
who spent the night wondering
if life would ever make sense again.
Morning does not demand
that we have everything figured out.
It simply opens the curtains
and says,
Try again.
So I will.
I will try again
with the courage I have,
not the courage I wish I had.
I will build slowly
if I cannot build quickly.
I will walk
if I cannot run.
I will rest
without calling myself lazy.
I will begin again
without being ashamed
that I had to begin again.
Because perhaps life
was never supposed to be
one straight road.
Perhaps we were meant
to lose our way sometimes,
to take unfamiliar turns,
to discover that the destination
we wanted so badly
was not the destination
we truly needed.
Perhaps becoming
is not about finding
a perfect version of ourselves.
Perhaps it is about
meeting ourselves honestly
in every season
the confident self,
the frightened self,
the hopeful self,
the exhausted self
and choosing to love
every one of them.
One day,
I will look back at this chapter
and realize I was stronger
than I thought.
I will remember the nights
I thought would never end
and smile at the morning
that eventually found me.
I will understand
that the silence was not emptiness.
The waiting was not wasted.
The delay was not denial.
I was becoming.
Quietly.
Painfully.
Beautifully.
And maybe that is enough
for tonight
to breathe,
to believe,
to keep one small light alive
inside the darkness,
and trust that somewhere beyond
this long and trembling night,
the morning
is already on its way.
