Single moment of weakness.

I allow this post to be my one, single moment of weakness. For a while now, my life felt deeply disrupted again. I knew the reason in the quietest chamber of my being, and I also knew why I chose to ignore it. It's going to be a messy entry - so forgive me for that.

Nothing in my life changed because of other people. I would lift my head from the depths of my room to seem okay. Yet internally, months felt like drowning while simultaneously begging for water. Months that others spent living with utter joy.

I realized I had placed myself in a situation where I once again allowed myself to be treated poorly because I did not meet all the imagined criteria. I wanted, just once, to be understood on the deepest, most sacred level. Beyond what is known to humans, using the flame I was forced to carry. I had all of the motivation to move mountains and even create new peaks - but before I even realized it - the situation turned around and the person I trusted began digging a hollow space beneath me, until I could no longer move, breathe, or live fully. And eventually I understood: there was nothing left to change, nothing left to offer. I was empty.

I believed that with the last crumbs of a positive mind - the only thing I felt I had left, I could remain someone aligned with peace, someone who helps, someone steady. I looked fine. Motivated. Functional. But when it all ended, I found my entire body rotting. I was not able to notice in time that all the cuts, all the bruises became a decay. This cannot heal - I thought I am dying - in fact, I was already long gone.

I would clench my fists to beat the filth of me, bit my skin to feel less violated. Until one day, it felt as if I took an axe and severed every single one of my limbs. The agony lingered for days. I felt delirious, unrecognizable to myself.

My body mirrored my mind. I developed an illness that paralyzed me for nearly two weeks. Stress got to me as my immune system aligned with my thoughts: complete shutdown. It may return, but doctors don't know when. There may be days when I won't be able to think clearly, eat, or sleep again - when the world keeps spinning quite literally with me standing still inside it.

But when worst moments passed, one night, clarity arrived.

The one I had been searching for in my earthly existence was me. Not the reflection of someone I loved, someone I hoped to find even in different eyes - S is most likely long gone. I didn't look for the softened version of myself either - the one I tried to sculpt so I could be held more gently. What I was looking for was the original presence that existed long before any of that. The version of us I thought I was pursuing in others was not ahead of me. It was behind me. Waiting for me to stop outsourcing my own existence. Waiting for me to turn around. 

In solitude, something unexpected happened. The silence I once feared became spacious rather than suffocating. Without anyone to mirror me, distort me, or define me, I began to expand in my own shape again. In the place of severed limbs I grew what was originally there - the wings.

For the first time in a long time, I was no longer bleeding from invisible wounds. I was no longer craving validation, reassurance, or proof of my worth and existence. The hunger that once defined me dissolved into something far more sustainable. From the outside, it may have looked like I had become distant, even hollow. Less emotional. Less reactive. Less available. But what appeared to be emptiness was in fact refinement. What seemed like loss was reclamation. I was shedding what was never truly mine to carry - projections, expectations, the need to be understood by those who could not see me. I was not meant to be gazed at. Not meant to be here.

What remained in all of this was my core - the vast and steady. A presence that had always existed beneath the noise, beneath the desperation, beneath the ache. And when I finally returned to it, I understood: I was never missing anything. I was only remembering who I had always been. I was grieving because I already knew that what I wanted was irreversibly dead. They don't exist anymore and I am alone. It was their choice, therefore I must accept it.

I had planted a seed in the coldest winter, while mourning what I thought I had become. What grew was light that slowly created warmth - I began to grow again - solely for those who never left my side. For those who knew when to step back and when to return. The rare ones who understood that I must rise by myself. For all of them I am forever grateful.

I have transcended what I once was. I hold no ill will. There is no bitterness in me, but I am no longer someone who carries their heart openly in their hands. My heart had become the source of rot, so it was removed in the only way I knew how: by detachment. I did not even realize that the entries I shared in a moment of weakness were seen by anyone. Yet there is no shame in them. I truly love the feeling of rain and the sun on my skin at all times. I am both chaos and tranquility. I embrace everything I was, everything I am, and everything I will become.

I no longer feel as deeply, nor do I trust as easily. I am rebuilding on my original foundation, which means I am no longer capable of betraying myself. I am not who I once was, yet I am more myself than ever. The "me" is not the same - yet it is my everything.

And for you:

May you realize that the one you have been searching for has always been you.

May you stop chasing yourself in others and gently return inward, where your true presence has been waiting.

May you rest in the deep peace of finally coming home to yourself.

With all the best,

Altair.