I’m eagerly anticipating the moment of outgrowing the version of myself that only knows how to survive.
It’s a lot, I know. But survival has a way of making everything feel like too much.
And it is too much. It’s far more than anyone should ever have to carry.
Survival mode manifests differently for each of us. For me, it looks like overthinking every word before I speak it. Like holding my breath in rooms that feel too quiet. Like shrinking myself so I don’t take up more space than I’m “allowed.”
It feels like hypervigilance dressed up as responsibility. Like never really resting, even when I’m still.
But I’m starting to crave something softer. Something slower. Something that doesn’t require me to brace myself against the world.
I want to wake up and not feel like I’m already behind. I want joy that doesn’t feel like it’s about to be taken away. And most of all, I want joy that doesn’t need to be earned.
I know this kind of becoming is slow, often invisible, like the way daylight shifts without announcement, gentle and unhurried.
But I feel it. The loosening. The little moments of safety. The split-second pauses where I don’t react the way I used to.
Those moments are all I need to know that I’m moving toward something better. That the version of myself who only knows how to survive is slowly, carefully, learning how to live.
