I made the unsorted talk on a VC. I'm pretty proud, and you can tell I've been holding that in the whole time.

I have to eat now.

Now you all know whyyy.

I'm growing, I'm actually growing.

Me after hugging some people.*

You no longer receive
my handwritten letters,
with their scrappy handwriting,
a tiny heart, and a ghost
drawn in the corner.
No more do you
read my playful words,
full of love and passion.

I have grown,
and my words have
grown with me.
I have outgrown life,
all that once
each that brought joy
especially you,
who now lingers only
in the margins of my past.

Writing is essentially becoming free. It all begins with a word.

Lying in bed in the morning I saw thoughts coming in, jealous thoughts, anxious thoughts, sad thoughts, self-pitying thoughts, which followed one another, and seemed to pass through my mind and then went out again, and they were nothing to do with me at all.

አልሚ ነይ ወዲ

The sky, vast and endless,
never fails to amaze me,
a canvas of dreams
where my thoughts can soar.
I hold it close, a silent witness
to my solitude.
But how I wish to capture
not just the sky,
but the presence of people too,
to frame them within my view.

Don’t touch my sorrow it's the refuge where my deepest thoughts dwell.
Don’t take my laziness as a flaw it's the armor I wear protecting me from the things that silently gulp me.
I know it’s eating me alive but don’t rush to save me don’t pull me out of the abyss.
Let me linger in my misery it’s the dark humor that keeps me breathing, the weight that grounds me.
Don’t strip away the heaviness that I cling to, or tell me I’m drowning just let me sink.
Let the darkness consume me in that void I find a strange ease a place where I can finally be still.
I'm fine truly. I’m not as lost as you think I’m not as shattered as I seem.
This is where I need to be for now. And if I rise again will be on my terms in my own time.

I WON.

You are only allowed to makolamet me if your sentence ends with thatttt.

Gather around people.

It’s like sometimes I see myself as two parts the damaged and the undamaged. I switch between them expecting more from one while trying to silence the other when she wants more.

I have to stop seeing her from a distance watching with a mix of longing and fear. I have to step in and embrace her where l start to let myself act like you’re mine because we aren’t two separate beings. I see myself as a parent and inside is a child and she needs to achieve or act fine when others interact. We’re one intertwined yet I keep this divide pretending that she's someone I can reach only when she has achieved when you’ve become what I expect. But the truth is I just need to pick her up the girl you’ve always been because she is you in all her flawed beautiful complicated entirety.

I’ve distanced myself because I’m too afraid to accept her too afraid of the reality that she might never be who I keep dreaming she could be. I see her as someone else, a stranger almost, because that’s easier than embracing her with all her scars and unmet expectations. I keep talking about her like she’s a third person someone I’ll get to later, someone I’ll love and take care of once she’s worth once she’s accomplished, once she feels human enough. But that’s just an act, a coping mechanism, because the hardest thing is to simply hold her now, to love her now, even when she feels lost even when she isn’t perfect.

I have to learn to see you not from a distance but up close with all your mess and all your grace and accept that you are already enough. There’s no need to wait no need to achieve more to deserve my care. I have to pick you up now, because you are already mine.
I am her, and she is me
tangled reflections in a fractured mirror imperfect but sometimes whole Even when it doesn’t feel like it
even when the lines blur.
She is me.