It didn’t happen like a movie.
no sudden sunrise.
no epiphany in the rain.
just a slow, aching silence
that stretched for years—
the kind of silence you start calling home
because you forget how to want anything louder.

I didn’t crash.
I didn’t scream.
I just stopped.
little by little,
I became background noise in my own life.

people said “you’ll find it again.”
like it was a thing I’d dropped
in the backseat of some old car.
but it wasn’t lost.
it was buried.
under disappointments,
under tired smiles,
under the slow erosion of giving too much
and getting too little back.

then one night,
doing nothing special—
just sitting in the dark,
bone-tired and emptied out—
I felt it.

not hope.
not fire.
just a pulse.
faint.
but mine.

I didn’t trust it.
didn’t believe it.
but I listened.
because after everything,
there was nothing left to lose.

so I followed the pull.
crawled, some days.
broke open, others.
but kept going.

and now—
I won’t lie, it’s still hard.
some mornings, I still feel like ash.
but the spark?
it’s here.
it’s small.
but it’s real.
and for the first time in years,
so am I.