I Have Arrived

In the midst of losing everything, I found myself, not chaos, but process. The urge to prove myself dissolved into something quieter, truer. I call it a reset, a reset only I can name, a fragile turning point that happened inside me.

I stood alone, perplexed, suspended in time, watching the old me fray at the edges. I rebuilt, grain by grain, letting God be my compass when the map dissolved.

I remember the day the world tilted, my life spiraling into a chorus of chaos. Anger burned hot, a wildfire fueled by betrayals-friends and family members who wore masks of care while weaving harm in the margins of our bonds.

A teardrop left its stain, stubborn and permanent, a scar that wouldn't wash away. Each reflection showed not just an echo of the past but a reminder I'd been played, used, and broken-and that the blame, for a long time, had settled on me. The pain rooted in childhood-yearning to belong, never quite finding the door-hung heavy, heavy enough to tilt the room.

I refused to keep blaming the past. I chose a path toward healing, even when the road begged me to stay numb. Therapy felt like stair steps I sometimes declined, but the ache of not trying was louder than the chorus of excuses.

The year 2020 arrived as a wrecking ball and a revelation. The world turned upside down, and so did my inner weather-flipped inside out, exposed, raw. I was nearly lost to the tide of despair, with self-care pushed aside in service to everyone else-family, children, clients, work-until the mirror became a stranger I dreaded facing.

There came a moment of brutal honesty: I no longer wanted to live in fragments. Betrayal, envy, the money spent chasing a freedom that wouldn't come-these things clawed at me until there was nothing left but a thin line between surrender and survival.

Yet in that frail line, a vow began to hum. May God have all the glory. He opened a door I hadn't noticed-the gift of writing, the gift of healing, the surprising doorway to a voice I'd silenced for too long. Born again, not by miracles alone but by faith that steadied me when I forgot how to stand. Writing these poems gave me a voice, a way to name the unnameable, and a chance to heal what had learned to endure in silence.