On days like this, the loneliness seeps in, not because there's no one willing to enter my life, not because my world is barren of people, but because I built the walls myself and locked the doors from the inside. It's not that I couldn't let anyone in, it's that I chose not to.
I never admitted I was broken, but deep down, I knew exactly what brokenness felt like. It clung to me like a shadow, a constant ache echoing through the hollow parts of me. I never said I was sad, but I carried sadness like a second skin. I wore it in silence, hidden beneath smiles that never quite reached my eyes.
In a world riddled with cruelty and despair, there are still people who find happiness, who bask in the light as if it was made just for them. And I envy them. Because in a world that left me shattered and drenched in its darkness, I searched for the light. I craved it, reached for it with desperate fingers, but the world never wanted to light up my path. It preferred to keep me stumbling in the dark.
So, I stopped searching. I gave up the fantasy of warmth and hope and embraced the darkness instead. I wandered deeper and deeper into that cold void, trying to snuff out even the tiniest flickers of light that dared to linger. Because if I could extinguish them, maybe the emptiness would feel less like a punishment and more like a choice.
But the truth is, no matter how far I went, how deeply I buried myself in that endless night, my heart still throbbed with a quiet, persistent ache. Still yearned for something it couldn't name. Still clung to the shards of hope I thought I'd let go of.
Why does my heart still feel shrouded in the dark? Why does it still feel so empty, so hollow? And why, despite every effort to drown it out, does that sliver of light continue to flicker within me?
Maybe I'm not meant to snuff it out. Maybe I'm meant to let it grow. But how do you nurture light when the darkness feels like home?