do better

sometimes you wake up & feel the weight before your eyes even open. like the world’s been sitting on your chest all night, daring you to breathe. you ever feel like that? like your body’s moving but your soul’s still on pause? like you’re living on autopilot, trying to remember when you actually felt alive instead of just existing.

it’s easy to say “i’m fine.” we all do it. it’s safer that way. safer than explaining the chaos in your mind, the guilt you carry for not being the best version of yourself, the shame that comes with knowing you could be doing more for yourself, for the people who believe in you, for the ones who ain’t here no more. sometimes the hardest person to forgive is the version of you that stopped trying.

truth is, i been there. staring @ the mirror wondering who the hell’s looking back. wondering when i lost the light in my eyes, when i started treating my potential like a maybe instead of a promise. i’ve hurt people who loved me, i’ve pushed away the ones who saw me clearly, & i’ve called it “protecting my peace” when really i was just scared. scared to grow. scared to fail. scared to admit that i was the reason i couldn’t move forward.

but i’m learning. i’m learning that healing ain’t pretty. it’s not sage & soft music & journal entries. it’s ugly cries. it’s sleepless nights. it’s accountability. it’s breaking the cycles you built to survive. it’s telling yourself you gotta do better & actually meaning it.

better doesn’t mean perfect. it means trying again after you said you wouldn’t. it means calling your people back. it means eating something today. praying even when it feels like no one’s listening. forgiving yourself when you fall short. it means not letting pain turn you bitter. not letting love scare you off. not letting the old you drag you back to the same dark rooms you already escaped.

i’m not who i used to be & thank god for that. i’m still rough around the edges, still figuring out how to love right, still learning how to show up even when i don’t feel like it. but every day i wake up & choose to keep going is a day i’m doing better.

so yeah. i gotta do better. not because i owe it to anyone else, but because i owe it to the kid i used to be. the one who believed i could be something more. the one who just wanted to make it out. the one who still lives somewhere inside me, whispering that i’m not done yet.

& i’m not.

                      -rl