I Am Still Hurting And Wake Up Each Day

I don’t have a bow to tie this with. No lesson. No silver lining. No clean ending. Just this truth sitting in my throat: I am still hurting, and I still wake up.

Some days it feels like an accident. Like I wasn’t supposed to open my eyes, but did anyway. Like my body pulled me forward before my mind could stop it. Before the grief could wrap itself tighter. Before the ache could win.

Other days, it feels like defiance. Like a whispered fuck you to everything that tried to break me. To the people who left, to the versions of me that begged them to stay, to the god I used to pray to in parking lots, and didn’t hear back from. I wake up just to say, you didn’t take all of me.

But mostly, it’s quiet. No meaning, no battle cry. Just breathe. Just tired bones. Just the weight of another morning. And I think that counts.

I used to think healing meant the pain would leave. That if I worked hard enough, forgave fast enough, therapized the hell out of myself, I’d stop feeling it. But I don’t think that’s how it works anymore. Some pain doesn’t leave. It just changes shape. It becomes background noise. Scar tissue. Something you carry, not something you cure.

I still flinch at things that shouldn’t hurt anymore. Still miss people I don’t want back. Still get blindsided by memories that feel like they just happened. I still scroll past photos that split me in half. Still lie in bed staring at the ceiling, wondering if maybe this is just who I am now—someone who keeps bleeding inward.

And yet. I wake up.
I brush my teeth. I make coffee. I pretend I don’t see my own sadness reflected in the window. I reply to emails. I text back. I laugh when something’s funny and then forget about it.

This is what it looks like, I think. Not healing, maybe. But being alive in the aftermath.

And if that’s where you are, too—if you’re still hurting and still waking up and still not sure if that’s brave or just what you’re supposed to do— I see you.

And I think it counts.
I think it all counts.

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