Who am I?

To rebuild is to say,
”I am still here, still becoming“.

Unfinished Rooms

I have spent long nights lying awake,

Trying to answer the question:

“Who am I?”

But no matter how often I circle it,

The answer refuses to land.

Instead,

what I’ve found,

often painfully, sometimes quietly,

is who I no longer wish to be.

The woman who paints over her pain in shades of denial,

silences her fire out of fear it might burn too bright,

and drowns her sorrow in bottles,

leaving behind only a trail of glass and heartbreak.

The one who recoils from love as if it were poisonous,

and pushes away the people trying to hold her with care.

Still,

I am heartbroken by the damage I’ve caused,

the hearts I’ve scraped raw,

and the people I’ve hurt in my undoing.

I remember standing at my preschool graduation,

Clutching a certificate I didn’t care about,

and scanning the crowd for my mother,

her absence a palpable void.

The world stopped that day,

that very moment,

became silent,

And I began to quietly invent soft creations in my head.

I imagined her smile,

And how proud she might have looked.

I began living inside my head,

rewriting reality into something bearable,

And inventing joy where absence lived.

“You need to figure out who you want to be.”

My psychologist tells me.

I haven’t created that image,

Not yet.

The image of who I want to be is still a work in progress.

But I imagine it tastes like bread dipped in minestrone.

Oreos softened in warm milk.

Smells like sea air; fresh, briny, wild.

Sounds like laughter breaking through chaos,

dancing, even while crying, among people who love her.

I imagine she sits at the back of a crowd,

Or maybe in the front,

listening to live jazz,

exploring the melodies,

and allowing the words to speak through the saxophone, violin, and the piano keys,

Until they eventually create something beautiful.

She loves music,

words,

her words,

How they collide and hold each other,

Until they’re safe enough to become raw, brave, and honest.

I think she’s still the little girl,

looking for her mother in the crowd,

sitting at the front of her house,

looking at the street ahead,

and patiently waiting.

Still living in the house that almost ruined her,

and trying by all means to finish it.

Until then,

I’ll commit to this one truth:

I will go back to the first moment I remember pausing when it felt unbearable;

the girl looking for her mother in the crowd,

And press play.

Not pausing, this time.

This blog is where I collect the fragments:

Lived truths, quiet inventions,

and questions from my journey to becoming finished.

For now,

I’m Still Living in That House.

Thank you for being a part of this journey with me.

Your eyes,

even if they linger a little,

mean the world to me.

If my words find you,

whether mentally, emotionally,

somewhere in between,

or nowhere at all,

May they only find you with Soul

And in Tenderness.

Shantey