#weathered&withered

[mariacheri]

Endings do not announce themselves. They burrow beneath ordinary days until they become indistinguishable from the rest. We live through them without knowing. Only when we look back do we find ourselves searching for the last time they rested within our grasp.

[mariacheri]

Some days I have to remind myself that everyone is carrying something invisible. We move through each other’s lives like ships crossing in fog, seeing only outlines and never below deck. Beneath ordinary conversations are griefs and weights that leave no bruises for the world to notice.

And so perhaps kindness begins not in grand gestures, but in the quiet decision to leave people lighter than we found them.

[mariacheri]

People have no idea what it cost me to still be standing here. They do not know how many nights I spent digging through wounds I stitched shut with my own bleeding hands, peeling them open again so others could rest peacefully atop the ruins left behind. I never longed for revenge, nor for them to taste even a fraction of what they handed me. Still, there is a particular cruelty in having to heal from wounds you never deserved in the first place.

I learned to hold my breath before every revelation, terrified that certainty would merely put a name to what I had been trying not to believe. And when it does, I cannot even find gratitude in being right. There is no comfort in having your worst fears validated.

Perhaps what frightens me most is the possibility that this never leaves me. I have become fluent in disappointment, practiced in receiving half-truths dressed as honesty. Somewhere along the way, I learned how to settle. Not for what I wanted, but for whatever fragments remained after everyone else had taken their share.

[mariacheri]

I don’t write about people right away. I let them settle like silts at the bottom until they quiet down or seem like they no longer matter. Only when they rise again, unbidden, do I understand… It mattered. It stayed.

It takes me a while to write or even to speak. Even with the people I trust most, I still hold back. I think more than I say. I measure and sift every word. There are so many thoughts I keep to myself, so many feelings I push down until they’re too heavy to carry, I'll carry them and let them die with me.

And still, I try to be here. I come around to the ones who remain, to the ones who hold my hand without me having to explain what I feel.  To the ones who hold my hand and read what I cannot say, feel the quiet tremor in my cold, clammy palms. And when I show up, I do so honestly with whatever I have, even if it isn’t everything.

If I’m going to be hurt, I’d rather it be swift… clean and certain than the slow unraveling of something I gave in good faith.

[mariacheri]

I am easily shaken. The faintest tremor, a hint of bad news, and my hands turn cold, trembling beneath the surface. No one sees. I hide the quiver, the near-fall of tears, the quiet unraveling. I get shaken, but I do not fall.

Perhaps this is what I become, this careful sentinel, trained in the art of expecting the worst. There is little joy in it, little to gain. Yet when all is said and done, and what I feared never comes to pass, there is a strange relief in knowing I had prepared for the storm that never came. A quiet victory, uncelebrated, yet mine.

[mariacheri]

I am only human. Of course I got angry. I questioned everything. I reached a point where words were merely words and even actions lost their weight. I could no longer rely on the good memories, because happiness leaves no scars. Only impressions in the mind. And memories in the mind are fragile. They blur, they shift, they make me wonder whether they were ever real, or if I just imagined all those.

Yet I am only human, which means I still want to believe. I still want to forget. I still want to trust that not every person carries the same ending. I am only human to think that if you had offered me an explanation, I would have understood everything. But you are only human too. To choose silence, to refuse the burden of making me understand, because who am I to ask for even a single sentence from you?

I am only human, and God knows there are moments when it feels like I can no longer carry this weight at all.

[mariacheri]

FML

I think there is no perfect word to comfort someone who is struggling. From my own experience, I’ve tried so hard searching for it. Something soft, something steady, but the moment it’s spoken, it loses its shape. Advice turns into static. Encouragement settles like weight. When a mind is already full, already loud, even kindness, ironic as it is, can become another burden.

I think that’s why silence feels merciful. It is forbearing. Not the hollow kind, but the kind where you sit beside someone and let the moment breathe. Like standing near a quiet fire, feeling the warmth without reaching into the flame. There’s no need to explain, to measure pain, or to force meaning. Staying is enough. Sometimes, presence speaks in ways words never learn to.

On days when anger curdles into silence, when even breathing feels like a mistake and my life tastes like something I never asked to swallow.

[mariacheri]

Some may argue with me on this, but we live by different facts and see the world through different perspectives. That is why faith is not rooted in facts, it is rooted in hope. Facts change, perspectives shift, but hope remains. Hope does not disappoint. It endures. Hope dies last.

On the plainest of days, all was altered beyond return.