A Climate of Extremes

A Climate of Extremes

The collected work / 37 poems

A Climate
of Extremes

Poetry by Kash Baloch

Storms, desire, grief and the discipline of becoming.

Explore the collection ↓

A Climate of Extremes moves through identity, love, mental health, loss and resilience—from the storm within to the work of rebuilding.

Read in sequence, or choose a title below. The collection is presented in full, with its original website labels.

Contents — choose a poem

01 / 37

Storm Within

mental health / resilience / healing

As ships brave stormy weather, nearly sinking to the ocean's floor, sailors whisper silent prayers, hoping to return to lives they left ashore. No sea monster could inspire fear quite like electric skies that roar, as lightning strikes repeatedly, until the night is sore. As though lured by some unseen source, water fills this fractured hull, each creak a whispered warning, each wave a violent lull. The compass spins in circles, drunk on chaos, void of north, while courage clings to splintered wood and bargains back and forth. At the edge of dusk and sunset, when the skies are watercolor bright, where amber bleeds to violet in surrender to the night, I see reflections of myself in oceans I can’t outrun— a man at war with tempests he mistakes for setting suns. And if I make it back to land, salt stitched into my skin, I’ll know the storm was never out there— it’s always been within.

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02 / 37

Only You

love / relationships / desire

Only you— could make absence feel inhabited, as though emptiness itself had learned your shape. Only you— could turn my pulse into percussion, my restraint into ruin, my silence into something dangerously awake. It’s not one heart, but two halves misfiring beneath a sky too small to contain what we became. You were the match, the oxygen, the arson and the aftermath— and I, too willing to be flame. Only you— with your gravity disguised as gentleness, your mouth made of prophecy and trouble. You touched me once and every locked room in me forgot its combination. I carried your name like contraband beneath my ribs, smuggled it through sleepless nights, through want, through worship, through all the ways desire tries to masquerade as fate. Only you— could make me mistake surrender for salvation. Could make a bruise feel holy, a risk feel written, a downfall feel deserved. And still, after the wreckage, after the fever broke, after reason returned with blood on its hands— I would know you in any lifetime by the way my soul leans toward its own undoing. Only you.

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03 / 37

Constant Gardener

healing / resilience / growth

I am a constant gardener, in a war with weeds, determined to keep my landscape green, although sometimes I dwell on dandelions to see the scatter of their seeds. All the tears I give the earth are roots that ground the tallest trees. Not threatened by thorns, with shears as my weapons, I bloom like tulip bulbs in Spring. Now that I stop to smell the flowers, I luxuriate in their lessons and count the blessings that they bring. There’s no healing without feeling; life is suffering. Bouncing back, real resilient, can be beautiful and rewarding. Lush as palms, pinned to prayer, I place my patience in the soil. What survives neglect still bears the memory of toil. So I water every withered part I once abandoned out of shame, and learn that growth is not a grand performance— it is repetition, light, and rain. Some seasons arrive as famine, some as floods that overfeed. Some losses rip up whole foundations and salt the ground beneath. Still, I return with dirt beneath my fingernails and hope between my teeth. Because even gardens overrun by grief and chokevine can recover their design. Even scorched fields can one day wear abundance like a second skin. Even I, after all this weather, can blossom again.

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04 / 37

Chronic C.U.T.I.E.

identity / resilience / society

Chronic C U T I E, shout it from the roofs, and call for accessibility. I can do it all, even on days when I flare like nostrils. I am the raging, blazing sun when it’s determined to burn. Waited patiently, but now it’s my turn. So I’ll shine like crystalline sand, like the diamond in the rough that I have always been. Chronic C U T I E, own it, just don’t let it decide you’re not the one. Ableism aids and abets a society that tells us that we’re different, or that we can’t and need to stay in our own lanes. Refuse to be a product of their prescription, even if we fit the description. Our intuition’s strong from living so close to pain’s precision. We become fluent in endurance, in the language of adaptation. We know how to build a life inside limitation without letting it become our entire narration. I am not a cautionary tale. I am not your pity project. I am not the body you reduce to what it cannot do on its worst day. I am innovation. I am stamina. I am a witness to my own becoming. Make the doorway wider. Build the ramp. Lower the barrier. Listen when we tell you access is not charity— it is justice made practical. Chronic C U T I E, say it proud, say it plain: I deserve joy without apology. I deserve rest without shame. I deserve a world that does not demand my suffering as proof of my worth.

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05 / 37

Unlearning War

mental health / healing / resilience

All it took was time to truly let my wounds heal, as introspection taught me how to feel. I was as angry as a warrior starved for honour, like a soldier in trenches waiting to be called a martyr. I made the world walk on eggshells around me, mistaking fear for respect, control for stability. The slightest misstep woke the dragon— they were David, I was Goliath, my voice a weapon that echoed like thunder. When all I needed was a reminder that I was also filled with wonder. Not every battle required blood. Not every silence was an attack. I was not being hunted— I was being held accountable. So I unlearned war. I loosened my grip on anger as identity. I stopped rehearsing conflict in rooms that were already safe. And slowly— the world stopped bracing for me. And I stopped bracing for it. What remained was not weakness— but peace I no longer felt the need to defend.

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06 / 37

Invisible Ink

relationships / family / love

You signed your name in invisible ink upon my stony heart; where others failed to leave an impression, you left an eternal mark. I was intrigued by you from our first chance meeting, even though you loathed me from the very start. Now, I remain indebted to you for illuminating my path through the dark. If you weren’t here; what would I have done? If you weren’t near; who'd I have become? Without you, dear; my life is a gun. Without you, I fear, my sorrow would’ve won. At eight years young, when Sam excitedly introduced our families, I tried to impress you with Street Fighter, but to my chagrin, you had no time for childish games. Soon, I’d find excuses to visit your home, to catch sight of the unicorn, but even then, you were too cool for me. Still engaged in foolishness, your wisdom surpassed my child’s play. Perhaps my pursuit of your friendship shrouded me in desperate shades, so I gave up, and invented lies, just to appease my bruised, infantile ego. I even tried to start a playground war, though your bicycle wheels were immune to my grenades. Even still, the truth remained: your disinterest dealt the harshest blows. It wasn’t until I grew some more, and fate reunited our airy spirits in fire. Middle school solidified our bond and set the foundation for our lifelong alliance to transpire. We survived mutual losses hand in hand, and supported one another through life’s many falls. Centuries from now, archaeologists will find that you were painted on my ancient cavern walls all along. To this day, I cannot pretend there is anyone who has been a more genuine friend. You’ve outlasted all the rest, to come out on top; without you, my dear, I fear, I never would’ve grown at all. Through objectivity and tough love, you appeal to my understanding of myself and of the world. Gratitude pales in comparison to all the ways you enrich my soul. And if time ever dares to drag us toward separate shores, know this: you are written into the architecture of me. Long after language fails, and memory warps at the edges, your loyalty will remain one of the clearest proofs that love can exist platonically and still save a life.

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07 / 37

Sage

mental health / healing

I close my eyes and disappear sometimes, in a cloud of cleansing sage. Quiet my chaotic mind, I vanish without a trace. As apprehension subsides, I find myself in a daze; set adrift in bliss, I resurface in some foreign place. There, my spirit is softer, less splintered by the machinery of thought. My nervous system loosens its fists, and every burden I’ve carried for too long falls soundlessly to the floor. In that suspended hush, I am no one’s enemy, not even my own. The ghosts that pace the hallways of my body grow tired, sit down, and finally stop speaking over one another. For a moment, I remember what it feels like to be housed gently. To inhabit myself without bracing for impact. To breathe without borrowing panic from futures that haven’t happened. Then slowly, as all rituals must, the smoke thins. The room returns. The world knocks again. But something holy lingers— a reminder that peace is not a myth, only a practice; and that even I, with all my storms, am still capable of becoming calm.

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08 / 37

Borrowed Truth

identity / healing / resilience

I am loved and I am worthy. I am safe and I am free. I am powerfully protected. I am master of my body, and ruler of my mind. I am not the lies that pain once taught me to repeat. I am not the ruin of every room I’ve ever left shaking. I am not the sum of my mistakes, my illnesses, or the names I’ve been called by people too wounded to see me clearly. I am divinely guided, even when the road goes dark. I am becoming, even when progress is invisible. I am allowed to begin again as many times as it takes for my soul to feel like home. I welcome softness without surrendering strength. I honour my limits without confusing them for weakness. I trust that what is meant for me will not need me to betray myself in order to receive it. I am loved and I am worthy. I am safe and I am free. I am powerfully protected. I am master of my body, and ruler of my mind. And on the days I cannot believe these words, I will borrow their truth anyway until my spirit remembers it was always mine.

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09 / 37

Nightingale

family / love / loss

I stood there helplessly, drowning in defeat, darkened by my inability to breathe life into your rusted heart’s resilient beat, a symphony I memorized in forty weeks from the inside. Incapable of returning you to the raven-haired beauty of your prime, I bite my tongue until I’m numb, as my lips are sewn shut with twine. You heal me when you hold me, as though I am still your innocent, little child. I am haunted by the trauma when I will one day find that I can no longer turn to you for comfort, or the reassurance of your smile. I know I run but I am frightened, as I see you become so frail; my mind refuses a reality where you are not my nightingale. Your song lulled me into slumber, as you softly sang the world to sleep; if only I had looked at you long enough to see that all you were ever doing was trying to love me. There is no bond like that between a mother and her only son, even if he is less deserving of her pride than of her scorn. And yet, even now, I know your love has never once been measured by what I earned. It was there in every warning, every sacrifice, every prayer you uttered under your breath when life turned cruel. I have not always known how to receive devotion that wasn’t dressed as danger. I have not always honoured the woman who built me with her body, then kept rebuilding me with her mercy. But if grief is the tax we pay for having been loved well, then I will pay it trembling. I will pay it in remembrance. I will pay it by carrying your tenderness into a world that made you far stronger than you should’ve ever had to be. Mama, if one day your voice is gone from this earth, it will still remain stitched through mine.

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10 / 37

The Disappearing Hand

loss / relationships / letting go

My earliest memories are of your hand slipping away from me, like sand through my fingers, across the land, agonized that you don’t understand. Bruised, beaten hearts are my brand, ripped me apart like poison, and somehow resilient, I still stand— devoid of anger, an unchanged man, despite your plots against our plans. So I raise a paper cup to my parched lips again; a toast to your assault of your best friend. For you, I would’ve dived the depths of every ocean, or ventured to the edges of the Earth, if only you had asked— but your neglect was enough to destroy my worth. So I chased my dreams at the bottom of bottles instead. Drowning, despair embraced me as I descend; here is where I belong, safely sedated by a siren song. I crash into jagged shores that tear me open— though I swear I’ll be whole again. If I survived abandonment, there is no wound from which I cannot mend. But healing is not heroic— it is quiet, it is humiliating, it is slow. It is learning how not to reach for the same disappearing hand every time loneliness starts to grow teeth. And maybe one day, I will remember that what slipped away from me was never meant to be what holds me together.

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11 / 37

Gentrify Some Other Guy

society / humanity / identity

Wolf of Wall Street types, with slicked back hair, stole the stained ceramic tiles right out from underneath my single mother’s sweet, aching feet. She saved every penny that she earned to buy this house— her pride and joy! Only to be evicted by sharks disguised as sheep who dragged her out into the streets between their teeth. “Starbucks coming soon,” like the kiss of death— another five within twenty feet, in the same spot where my b-boy crew and I once breakdanced to the Beastie Boys and Run DMC. Ma was relocated forcefully to some suburban scene that might as well have been called Hell. They locked their doors when she stepped outside— as if survival was suspicious. Gentrify some other guy, erect your crooked condos in some other sky. You build profit on the bones of belonging. You erase culture and call it “progress.” You price out pain and package it as aesthetic. But we remember. We remember the laughter that echoed off cracked concrete, the borrowed sugar, the shared grief, the way strangers became family before you turned community into currency. You can repaint the walls, rename the streets, rewrite the narrative— but you will never own what you erased.

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12 / 37

Infestation

mental health / healing

Anxiety’s an infestation of the mind, it lays its eggs under my skin, securing a foundation for the home where it will rear its kin. It is the black widow of doubt, and simultaneously its web; the venom in her sac, and yet the prey within her net. Untherapeutic thoughts crawl like millipedes, racing in Olympic circuits across my chest as I concede defeat. It is a caterpillar spinning its cocoon inside the fragile forests of my overripe emotions— threatening transformation, but promising collapse. It is the voice that sounds like mine but speaks in sabotage. The hand that grips my throat and calls it caution. The fire alarm that rings in empty buildings. But I am learning— not every thought is truth. Not every fear is prophecy. Not every storm requires surrender. Sometimes survival is simply sitting still while your mind invents new ways to destroy you— and choosing not to believe it. Sometimes healing is not silencing the noise, but recognizing that you are not the one making it.

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13 / 37

Rock Bottom, Redefined

mental health / addiction / resilience

So there I was, sunken at my latest definition for what it meant to hit rock bottom. At thirty-one, I was penniless, promiscuous, and panicking— teetering dangerously close to manic, and overdue for another severe break from reality. How did I get to this point? Everything was supposed to be different. I was supposed to be different. But somehow, it was always more of the same. Perhaps my greatest delusion was believing I was destined for greatness when really I was just made to be a stain— a grease fire that refused to go out, an aneurysm that never quite learned how to clot. But if there was anything left that resembled grace, it was this— I could not lie to myself anymore. No scapegoats. No rewrites. No romanticizing ruin. Just truth, raw and unflattering, staring me down without blinking. And in that moment, buried beneath the wreckage of who I had been— there was something else. Not hope. Not yet. But accountability. And that was enough to begin again.

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14 / 37

Sovereignty

identity / healing / resilience

And I swear with all my sovereignty that I’d never curse you or corrode you. When the rest evade you, I couldn’t even desert you. The Creator’s breath inside you marked you and it made you— there is no battlefield, the war has always been within you. No holier war has been fought than the one that seeks to make you whole. You are loved. You are worthy. You are safe. You are free. Not in theory— in truth. Strip away the noise, the shame, the borrowed hatred you mistook for identity. There is nothing broken here that was not taught to fracture. There is nothing missing that cannot be remembered. So stand in your divinity without apology. Because the only salvation you have ever needed was the courage to believe you were never lost.

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15 / 37

Condemned

relationships / letting go / loss

You dilapidate me, like condemned factories that line forgotten streets. Even as you raze my foundation, you chip away at me like concrete. Stampede me like a wildebeest, scatter the remnants of what we used to be like debris in demolition. Our love— gentrified. Replaced with tempered glass and hollow architecture that reflects everything but contains nothing. Still— I scrub you away like acid rain, until erosion feels like cleansing. Until absence starts to resemble peace. But you return, as ruins do— romanticized, reframed, mistaken for something worth preserving. And I remember why I loved you— and why I had to let you collapse.

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16 / 37

No Necromancy

loss / letting go / relationships

You’re dead to me, since you weren’t there through the death of me. No need for Ouija boards— there’s no talking to you. I remain a phantom, a relic from your past. Isn’t it a shame our friendship couldn’t last? I threw you out like trash, flicked you away like cigarette ash. But grief is strange— it lingers long after burial. it revisits long after goodbye. So this is not vengeance— it’s closure. Not violence— but release. Because the truth is, you didn’t kill me. You just revealed who I had to become to survive you. And that version of me— no longer knows your name.

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17 / 37

Undeniable

identity / resilience / healing

No longer searching for validation in the faces of foes dead behind the eyes, I have grown stronger than ever before— as I remember that a new moon will always rise in my vanilla sky. I am the sun, the stars, the space between collapse and creation. I am not dependent on applause to exist. I am not diminished by absence of recognition. What is meant for me does not require performance. What is mine will not ask me to shrink. So I stand— unwitnessed, unapologetic, unaltered. Because the moment I stopped asking the world to see me— was the moment I finally did.

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18 / 37

Arctic Body

mental health / resilience / healing

voices fracture into faces as memory freezes over— people replaced by glaciers that move slower but cut deeper. I lower myself into the Arctic and pray I remember how to swim in something that does not want me alive. cold has always been honest. it does not pretend to hold you while plotting your disappearance. it does not whisper love with teeth behind its tongue. it simply takes— heat, breath, movement— until you learn what survival actually costs. they say the ice is melting. but no one talks about how fast a person can freeze when left alone inside themselves. I have been both— the collapse and the witness, the fracture and the flood. still— beneath all this frozen language, there is something moving. a current. a pulse. proof that even here— in the most inhospitable version of me— I have not stopped trying to live.

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19 / 37

Concrete Ego

mental health / identity / healing

I built myself like a structure meant to intimidate— all angles, no softness. a cinderblock of chaos, stacked high on ego and sealed with deflection. nothing got in. not truth, not tenderness, not the quiet voice that asked me to slow down. I called it strength. I called it resilience. I called it anything but fear. because fear doesn’t look like trembling when it lives long enough— it looks like control. it looks like reaction. it looks like a man who destroys everything before it has the chance to leave him. but even concrete cracks. even the hardest version of me could not withstand the pressure of being wrong for so long. so I broke. not loudly— not dramatically— but in small, undeniable ways that forced me to pay attention. and in that fracture, something honest finally entered. not to ruin me— but to rebuild me without the need to be untouchable.

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20 / 37

Climate of a Man

mental health / identity / resilience

with my heart in the Antarctic and my mind in monsoon heat, I have become a contradiction that breathes. fire one moment— consuming, demanding, impossible to ignore. ice the next— distant, silent, impossible to reach. people call it instability. I call it weather. because what else do you name a system you didn’t design but are forced to live inside? I have been blamed for every storm I didn’t know how to stop. apologized for climates I didn’t understand. feared for seasons I couldn’t predict. but even the wildest environments can be studied. even extremes can be navigated. and maybe I am not broken— just unregulated. just learning how to exist without destroying everything in my path. I am not one season. I am all of them— and I am finally learning when not to rain.

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21 / 37

The Discipline of Silence

healing / resilience / relationships

I used to think growth was loud— announcements, apologies, dramatic declarations of becoming better. but real change does not perform. it repeats. quietly. consistently. without needing to be witnessed. I learned this the hard way— through every moment I said I would change and didn’t. through every promise I broke before it had time to mean anything. accountability is not regret. it is behavior. it is choosing not to react when reaction feels justified. it is biting your tongue before it becomes a weapon. it is showing up differently even when no one expects you to. especially then. because growth is not proven in what you say— but in what you refuse to repeat.

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22 / 37

Self, Unlearned

identity / healing / resilience

I spent years becoming someone I thought I had to be— louder, harder, less breakable. someone who could survive anything by feeling nothing. it worked. until it didn’t. because numbness is not strength— it is absence. and absence cannot sustain a life. so I started unlearning. the anger I mistook for identity. the control I mistook for safety. the detachment I mistook for peace. it was not graceful. it was not immediate. it was not easy to sit with a version of myself I had spent years avoiding. but beneath all that noise, there was something else— quieter, steadier, unafraid of being known. and for the first time, I did not run from it. I stayed. and that was the beginning of everything.

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23 / 37

The Body Keeps Score

mental health / healing / resilience

my body remembers what my mind tries to revise. it flinches before I understand why. it tightens at the sound of certain names, certain tones, certain silences that echo too closely to something I survived. I have rehearsed forgetting— told myself it wasn’t that bad, that I was dramatic, that pain requires proof to be valid. but the body does not lie. it stores everything— in muscle, in breath, in the way my shoulders rise like they are waiting for impact that never quite arrives. healing is not linear. it is remembering without reliving. it is learning that safety is not a temporary condition. it is teaching your body that the war is over— even when it still wakes up fighting.

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24 / 37

Gentrified Love

love / relationships / loss

you replaced us with something cleaner. something quieter. something that looked better from the outside but had no history inside it. we used to be messy— loud laughter, shared grief, the kind of love that didn’t ask permission to exist. now you’ve turned it into architecture. glass walls. empty rooms. echoes where there used to be language. you call it growth. I call it erasure. because what you removed wasn’t dysfunction— it was depth. it was culture. it was the parts of us that didn’t fit your new aesthetic. and maybe you’re happier now. maybe this version of love feels safer. but safety without substance is just distance with better lighting. and I refuse to live inside something that looks whole but feels like nothing.

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25 / 37

Weaponized Tenderness

love / relationships / loss

you touched me like you were trying to understand something you had already decided to destroy. there is a violence in being seen without being held. in being studied without being chosen. you learned all my softest places— not to protect them, but to prove you could reach them. and I let you. because I mistook attention for intention. mistook proximity for care. mistook being wanted for being valued. but tenderness is not neutral in the wrong hands. it becomes strategy. it becomes leverage. it becomes a map to everything you should have guarded. I do not regret loving you. I regret how easily I handed you the instructions to unmake me.

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26 / 37

After the Apology

relationships / letting go / healing

you said sorry like it was currency. like if you spent enough of it, the damage would convert itself into forgiveness. but apologies without change are just rehearsals for repetition. I learned this watching you become predictable. the same mistake in different clothing. the same harm with better wording. the same cycle disguised as growth. I wanted to believe you. I wanted to be the kind of person who sees the best in people even when they hand you the worst of themselves. but belief is not obligation. and forgiveness is not access. so I stopped responding to your regret and started paying attention to your behavior. and suddenly— everything made sense. because real remorse doesn’t need to be announced. it shows up as something that never happens again.

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27 / 37

The Version of Me That Left

identity / letting go / healing

there is a version of me that stayed too long. that loved harder than he was loved. that bent himself into shapes that made other people comfortable while quietly disappearing. I don’t recognize him anymore. but I owe him everything. because he endured what I no longer tolerate. he believed what I now question. he stayed so I would learn how to leave. growth is not becoming someone new— it is outgrowing who you had to be to survive. and sometimes that requires grief. grief for the version of you that didn’t know better. grief for the time you cannot reclaim. grief for the love you gave that was never returned in the same language. but I do not shame him. I honour him. because without him— I would not have become someone who knows when to walk away.

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28 / 37

Hunger

love / relationships / identity

I have mistaken hunger for purpose. chased things that consumed me because I thought being devoured meant I was desired. there is a difference between being needed and being used— but it blurs when you are starving for validation. I fed people pieces of myself until I had nothing left to recognize as mine. and they called it love. and I believed them. because I did not yet know that real love does not require self-erasure. it does not demand you shrink to be digestible. it does not leave you emptier than it found you. so I stopped offering myself as something to be consumed. and started becoming someone who cannot be.

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29 / 37

The Quiet After Chaos

healing / resilience / mental health

there is a silence that comes after destruction that feels almost sacred. not because it is peaceful— but because it is honest. no more noise to distract you. no more chaos to hide inside. just you— and what remains. I used to fear this part. the aftermath. the stillness that forces you to confront what you’ve done, what you’ve lost, what you’ve become. but now— I understand its purpose. this is where rebuilding actually begins. not in the moment of collapse— but in the decision to not recreate it. over. and over. and over again. silence is not empty. it is space. and for the first time— I am not rushing to fill it.

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30 / 37

Elegy for Empathy

humanity / society / identity

As I grow older, I cultivate my connection to myself— and to my humble position on this planet. It saddens me to cross paths with those who worship triviality— counting cents instead of blessings, measuring worth in currencies that cannot buy meaning. Ego— that ancient illness— still infects the masses. Convincing the privileged they are chosen, the suffering that they are forgotten. But we are none of these things. We are the same breath wearing different bodies. We are atoms arranged into temporary identity. We are not meant to rank ourselves against one another. We are meant to recognize ourselves in each other. So I vow— to defend the voiceless, to stand beside the silenced, to refuse division disguised as order. Because there is no weapon more powerful than solidarity. And there is no failure greater than forgetting we belong to each other.

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31 / 37

Accountability Is a Method

healing / resilience / mental health

So there I was— again— at the bottom of another version of myself I swore I had outgrown. It is humbling to meet your own patterns face to face and realize they recognize you better than you recognize yourself. I had rehearsed progress without embodying it. Spoken healing without practicing it. Named my demons without ever dismissing them. And so they stayed. Comfortable. Familiar. Fed. But accountability is not a moment— it is a method. A discipline of choosing differently even when it feels unnatural. So I begin again. Not from scratch— but from truth.

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32 / 37

Revised

identity / healing / resilience

voices fracture into echoes, echoes into memory, memory into myth. And somewhere along the way, I became a story I was no longer sure I was telling correctly. But identity is not fixed— it is revised. Line by line, choice by choice, failure by failure. So I pick up the pen again. Not to rewrite the past— but to finally tell the truth about who I am becoming.

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33 / 37

The Discipline of Becoming

healing / resilience / mental health

The silence became deafening as it taught me accountability— a lesson louder than any chaos I had ever known. A boy who cries wolf too many times is destined to be abandoned, left alone with echoes of his own invention. Consistency— that was the missing language. Not apologies. Not intention. Action. I will climb mountains, swim through shark-infested waters, cross deserts in the name of self-mastery. Because I refuse to keep rewinding lives I’ve already damaged. Self-control is not suppression— it is discipline dressed as mercy. So I bite my tongue before it becomes a weapon. I pause before reaction becomes regret. I choose differently even when instinct begs me not to. Because I am no longer interested in being understood if it means continuing to hurt people who once loved me. Growth is not loud. It is repetition— of better choices no one applauds.

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34 / 37

Excavation

identity / healing / mental health

Discovering parts of me buried beneath years of neglect; my dust-covered heart rusted from disrespect. Empty for so long, I performed fullness— spread myself thin until even my soul began to starve. My ego stood guard like a tyrant king, refusing entry to truth too honest to entertain. Excuses became architecture— a fortress built to keep accountability out and delusion safe. I was both shepherd and scapegoat, leading blindly toward collapse. But excavation is painful. To dig through yourself and find what you buried on purpose— requires courage most people never meet. So I keep digging. Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. Because what I find beneath the damage is still mine to reclaim.

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35 / 37

Arsonist

healing / resilience / mental health

Blame became the flames that ravaged my reason, and I— the arsonist of my own undoing. My self-worth burned to the ground under accusations I refused to release. I wore my pain like armour, mistaking survival for strength. But denial is not protection— it is delay. No bullet, no punishment, no external force could penetrate what I refused to face. So I stood there— watching everything collapse under the weight of my own avoidance. Until finally— I stopped pointing outward. And turned inward with the same intensity I once used to destroy. Now— I remove the bandages instead of hiding the wound. I learn to love what I once resented. Because healing does not come from pretending it didn’t hurt— it comes from refusing to abandon yourself again.

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36 / 37

Growing Up, Not Down

healing / resilience / identity

Growing up—not down— is more complex than the cycles of the sun. Learning to walk when all you’ve ever known is how to run. No longer intimidated by the person I was meant to be, I wear my peace visibly— a quiet victory. Patience, once foreign, now lives here. I think before I speak. I choose restraint over reaction. I no longer confuse volume with power. Success— once impossible— returns as an option now that I’ve removed myself from my own opposition. Self-awareness became the turning point. Not validation. Not recognition. Understanding. I stopped fighting every battle— and started choosing which ones deserved me. Acceptance— my greatest teacher— showed me that surrender is not defeat. It is evolution. And for the first time in my life— I am not surviving. I am living.

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And Lastly, It Taught Me…

healing / love / resilience

And lastly, it taught me to love myself from the inside out. Friends and family may come and go, like seasons that do not ask permission before they change. But I remain. At the end of every unraveling, every departure, every silence that overstays its welcome— I am still here. So I owe it to myself to become sanctuary. To speak gently where I was once cruel. To forgive myself for not knowing what I could not have known. To hold my own hand when no one else reaches for it. Because self-love is not indulgence— it is survival reimagined as devotion. And if I am to be the only constant in my life, then I choose to be one worth staying for.

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