Starting Over
494 Words
I am learning
to choose myself first to guard my peace,
to honor my needs, to grow roots
deep within my own soul.
But I am also learning
love does not have to mean
losing pieces of who I am
it can mean standing whole,
while making room
for another heart beside mine.
To love you
without abandoning myself,
to build with someone,
not disappear into them
that is the balance I am learning now.
-Growth
After love leaves,
the silence feels unfamiliar
rooms echo differently,
mornings arrive heavier, and even joy
seems to wear mourning clothes.
But slowly,
life begins speaking again
through sunlight on your skin,
through laughter that surprises you,
through small moments that ask nothing
except that you keep going.
Starting over is not forgetting
it is carrying the lessons,
setting down the pain,
and trusting that what broke you open
also made room for something new to grow.
And one day,
without noticing when it happened,
you become your own beginning.
-New Love
To love again
is a quiet kind of bravery
the kind that does not shout,
but trembles softly as it opens its heart
one careful inch at a time.
After all that was broken,
after promises turned fragile,
after nights spent wondering
if love was ever meant to feel safe
there comes a moment
when hope, somehow,
blooms where sorrow once lived.
And suddenly,
there is someone new
not to erase what came before,
not to heal every wound for you,
but to stand in the sunlight with you
and say,
we can build something honest here.
A love that does not feel
like walking on shattered glass,
or begging to be chosen,
or shrinking yourself
to fit inside someone else’s heart.
But a love that feels
like exhaling
like warm hands in winter,
like laughter spilling freely,
like conversations that last until morning,
like eyes that look at you
and never make you question
whether you are enough.
This time, I do not enter love empty-handed,
asking someone else
to complete what I could not find in myself.
I come whole
with scars that taught me wisdom,
with boundaries shaped by pain,
with a heart that has learned
the difference between chaos
and connection, between attachment
and true devotion.
And still
I choose softness.
I choose vulnerability.
I choose to believe
that not every ending
is meant to make me fearful,
and not every beginning
is meant to break me.
So if this is love again,
let it be gentle.
Let it be steady.
Let it be the kind of love
that feels less like fire
and more like coming home
not losing myself in another,
but being deeply loved
for exactly who I am becoming.
And in this new beginning,
I do not start over
as the person I once was
I begin again
as someone stronger, wiser,
softer in the right ways, and finally ready
for a love that grows instead of wounds.
- Writer
