On Surviving the Spaces Between

I learned to accept being called weird. Not because of my face or my body, but because of my mind: the things I said, the questions I dared to ask, the reasons behind my actions. I have never belonged to the safe side of normal. I move differently. I think differently. I choose differently. I do the opposite of what is expected, not to shock, but because I cannot survive inside cages disguised as routines. I arrive quietly, unpredictably, carrying thoughts that often unsettle the predictable.

Lately, nostalgia has tightened its grip around my days. I remember everything, too much. Memories flood me without warning. The classrooms of my childhood. The songs that once saved me as a teenager. The laughter and conversations from 2012 that no longer exist in the same way. My parents’ younger faces. The smell of home. The taste of Christmas. And sometimes, in the middle of these beautiful flashbacks, a terrifying thought grips my chest: what if this is how dying begins? What if this sudden remembering is my mind gathering itself for departure? The idea terrifies me, not because of death itself, but because of how deeply I still want to live.

The last three months have torn through me. Grief came first. Then fear. Then exhaustion so deep it settled into my bones. Friends lost parents. They lost work. I almost lost someone whose presence had quietly become a pillar of my stability. Every day, my spirit screamed pray, pray, pray, while my mind chose chaos: relentless thoughts, merciless questions, nights without rest. I lay awake, trapped between faith and fear, begging my brain to let me breathe.

I tried to fill the emptiness but it wasn’t working? Why???? Afterall I was able to gain weight effortlessly. I carried more than I needed, hoping fullness would replace loss. It didn’t. I could not fill the spaces left in my friends. I could not fill the widening cracks inside myself. January came heavy-handed and unforgiving. It taught me that money, pretty dinners, distractions, and temporary escapes cannot save a starving soul. They only disguise despair, thin blankets stretched over deep ache.  What I wanted was simple: softness. A place to fall without breaking. A safety that did not demand strength. But softness felt unreachable, and love,  romantic love, became a burden I could not afford. I had nothing left to give. Not even a careless touch. Not even borrowed affection.

My feelings moved far beyond tiredness. Beyond exhaustion. I existed in a quiet collapse where emotions no longer screamed; they sank. I want to stitch together the distance between who I was and who I am becoming. I want to believe this season is not my undoing, but my becoming. This is not depression. This is grief teaching me how fragile I truly am. This is life demanding that I sit with everything I’ve been running from.

Some days, survival looks like ambition.

Other days, it looks like prayer.

And some days, it looks like simply staying alive when every part of you wants to disappear.

But still I stay.

And in the silence between heartbreak and hope, I am learning that the spaces between are not empty. They are where healing breathes quietly. They are where broken things relearn how to grow.

And maybe that is the bravest thing I have ever done.

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