It felt like fire finally admitting it burns because it has to. Like a city after a storm, still standing, but missing pieces only it remembers. And maybe that is what growing is. Mourning the person you were while learning to love the person who crawled out alive.
This year changed me to the core of who I thought I was. Somewhere between the grief, the silence, the people leaving, losing everything and the versions of me that did not survive it.. I became someone else. Not better in every way. Not softer. Not untouched. Just real.