She Never Told Anyone Why

After everything I’ve built, everything I’ve lost, everything I’ve grieved and outgrown, I am still becoming. Not because I am broken. Not because I am incomplete. But because I’ve surrendered to the truth that becoming is not a destination, it’s a devotion. It is not chaos. It is rhythm.

I no longer shrink in confusion. I don’t wait for clarity to arrive before I move forward. Instead, I give thanks. For the choices I now have. For the freedom to live, to change, to love again, without betraying who I used to be.

I am no longer a slave to my emotions. I feel them fully. I honor them gently. But I do not let them decide my life. And while I am no longer addicted to outcomes, I remain deeply loyal to my process. What I am is devoted. Devoted to becoming. Devoted to building a life I can breathe inside. One I can feel beneath my skin. One I don’t have to earn or explain.

I used to have questions I thought I deserved answers to. What if they didn’t hurt me? What if the people I loved and trusted to protect me hadn’t become the ones who shattered me? What if the hands that reached for me came with safety instead of silence?

What if my father had known, would it have broken him the way it broke me? Would my mother, or my aunt, have held me in the exact way I needed to be held? But they didn’t know. I couldn’t let it be known. And so, I held myself. Alone.

And I’ve held myself for more than two decades. When my hands were fragile and my legs were paralyzed, I crawled. I crawled myself back to safety. And for years, I believed that this was how I would always have to live. But somehow this year, something shifted, like the quiet turning of the moon, not predicted, not demanded. Just arriving.

And I am holding myself in this new phase now, a phase that is more beautiful. It is not dragging. It is not crawling. I have become someone who can carry that girl, the most precious girl, my precious little Pearl. The one who once thought she needed someone else to save her. But God has always been with her all along.

I’ve built a habit of growth. A habit of discipline. A habit of progress. And I’ve made it sacred to remember that softness is not weakness, and stillness is not absence. Not all of me blooms at once. But every day, I bring forward the pieces of myself with more joy, more truth, and less urgency. I’m not here to be rescued. I’m not here to be fixed. I’m here to unfold. I am already whole. My love is not a request. It is a presence. And what others feel was only the overflow.

To those I have hurt, I am sorry. To those who believe they have hurt me, I’ve already forgiven you. Not because you asked. Not because you earned it. But because I have forgiven the version of myself who once accepted pain as the only form of love.