every six months i look back and wince. as if growth is some cruel mirror showing me how naive i was to believe i had anything figured out. as if becoming is just a series of humiliations dressed up as wisdom. i thought aging meant answers, that clarity would arrive like the tide, slow and inevitable, faithful to the pull of something larger than me. but it’s juvenile to think life ever gets easier. maybe ease was never the promise, maybe endurance was. nothing about this has ever been easy for me. i’m scared all the time, but in quiet ways that don’t look dramatic enough to be rescued. trapped in a body that keeps trying even when the world doesn’t yield, even when the door stays shut, even when the silence feels deliberate. i used to think persistence meant i was brave, now i wonder if it just means i don’t know how to quit. and yet there’s still this quiet, maddening hope that it will all work out. i hate that hope. i hate how it survives everything. i’ve tried to outgrow it, to become more realistic, more adult, less tender, but it keeps breathing on its own. the irony: believing nothing has gone to plan and still waking up expecting mercy. i trust my gut like religion, like ritual, like it owes me something. like if i pray correctly, if i listen close enough to the ache inside my ribs, it will lead me somewhere soft. i tell myself what’s meant for me will find me. i say it like doctrine, but why would i believe that when nothing has ever gone to plan, when every blessing has arrived disguised as loss first. maybe “meant for me” just means “i will survive it.” control is a myth i keep praying into, a god i built because uncertainty felt too honest and i keep lighting candles to it anyway. and at night when the world quiets and there is no one left to perform for i cry to the moon like she has the answers, like she is ancient enough to understand the joke. she never does. she just hangs there, whole, distant, unmoved by my small catastrophes. but i keep asking anyway. because if i stop asking i might have to admit that the only thing that has ever answered me back is my echo.

and yet morning still comes and this time it feels less like an accusation and more like a hand on my shoulder. not loud, not cinematic, just light slipping through the blinds as if to say, “try again”, and i do. i always do. there is something almost holy about that, the way my heart keeps beating without asking for proof first. the way my body chooses continuation like it’s instinct, like it trusts a future i can’t yet see. i say i expect nothing now, but that isn’t true. i expect breath. i expect another chance to get it slightly less wrong. i still imagine futures while brushing my teeth, but now they don’t feel foolish. they feel possible. i still leave space on the shelf and instead of mocking myself for it i think maybe that’s hope.

hope isn’t loud in me. it doesn’t make grand speeches. it’s simple and feral. it’s the way i wash my face at night because tomorrow matters. the way i drink water like this body is worth taking care of. the way i keep buying notebooks because maybe i’ll finally have something new to say and maybe someone will be there who wants to witness it. it’s the way i look at the sky and don’t feel small, i feel included. maybe hope isn’t the belief that everything will work out perfectly. maybe it’s the quiet certainty that i will. that even if the plan falls apart, i will still be here, still reaching, still becoming. maybe hope is the proof that i haven’t given up on myself. i used to hate it for making me tender. now i’m almost grateful for it. thank god something in me keeps turning toward the light. when it flickers i don’t shield it from the wind anymore, i just let it glow. maybe growth is this: letting the night have its say and still keeping the flame. the moon hangs above me still, indifferent and watchful, and for once i don’t ask her to explain anything. i just stand here under her, changing in plain sight, bright enough for my own becoming.