Homecoming

My journey was never linear. It has always been a quiet weaving… of gaining and losing, of aching and rising, of holding on too tightly and then learning, with trembling hands, how to let go. Along the way, I drifted from the ones who first loved me in the raw, unformed shape of who I…

My journey was never linear. It has always been a quiet weaving… of gaining and losing, of aching and rising, of holding on too tightly and then learning, with trembling hands, how to let go. Along the way, I drifted from the ones who first loved me in the raw, unformed shape of who I was becoming. My oldest friends. The ones who held my laughter in their palms before I knew how heavy the world could get. The ones who knew me before I ever knew myself.

Healing, I’ve learned, doesn’t always look like light. Sometimes it looks like vanishing. Like unanswered messages. Missed birthdays. Empty chairs at weddings. Like silence so loud it hums inside the ribs of those who once heard your voice daily. And I know, God, I know, how it must have felt. Like I abandoned you.

But I didn’t. Not in my heart. Yet maybe I did in all the ways that mattered. In truth, I withdrew. I folded inward like a letter no one had the key to open. I disappeared not because I didn’t care, but because I cared too much, and didn’t yet know how to face the eyes of those who had once seen me unbreakable.

I stopped showing up. Not because I forgot, but because I feared. I feared that the version of me you’d find wasn’t someone I could offer without shame. I didn’t yet know how to belong to myself, and I couldn’t bear the thought of belonging poorly to you.

And I wish, truly, I wish I could’ve called you when I felt lost. But the pain was too loud, and I didn’t want to echo it into your life. I didn’t want to hurt you with my hurting. I didn’t want to bleed on you before I learned how to bandage the wound. So I chose silence, not from indifference, but from a kind of fierce, misguided love. Because I didn’t yet love who I was enough to believe you could still love me, too.

But please, let this reach you: I never stopped loving you. In the softest hours of night, I’d remember the tears we shed over nothing and everything, how we laughed until we gasped for air, how we held each other like anchors. You were my first home, before I ever built one with my own hands.

I wish I went to your weddings. I wish I held your babies, danced with your mothers, told you how proud I was as you stepped into the lives you dreamed of. I feel a quiet ache about all I missed, not guilt that wants punishment, but grief. A tender, echoing grief for the moments I didn’t have the courage to take.

But know this, if nothing else: I was never gone because I stopped caring. I was gone because I didn’t yet love who I was. And I couldn’t ask you to carry a version of me that I hadn’t yet learned to carry with grace.

Now, I know more. Not everything. But enough. Enough to return, barefoot and honest. Enough to knock gently on the door and say: if you’ll have me, I’m still here. Not perfect, but real.

If something in your chest stirs when you read this, if your heart whispers my name in the space between breaths, maybe you’ve missed me too. Maybe you’ve left a light on. Maybe your door was never locked.

To the ones who taught me how to love before I knew what love demanded, to my soul sisters, my wild tribe, my heart’s earliest keepers… I miss you. I carry you in every burst of laughter I’ve reclaimed, in every step I’ve taken toward becoming someone whole. I don’t expect to pick up where we left off. I only hope you know: I never left in spirit.

Thank you for still loving me, despite my silence. And if you’ll let me, I’d like to find you again. As a better version of myself. As someone who finally knows how to stay.