life

Tag: dailyprompt-1891

  • The Company of Shadows.

    They never show up all at once. Depression and anxiety.

    They arrive slowly, like fog rolling in on a quiet street. First, you stop returning calls. Then you stop sending them. You say, “I just need a few days,” but the days stretch out until silence becomes routine.

    They rearrange your furniture. Turn your bed into an anchor. Your phone into a weight. Your mind into a hallway with all the lights off.

    They tell you no one understands. They point to the headlines, the empty streets, the curated smiles online. They whisper that it’s easier this way—quieter. Safer. Controlled.

    They make isolation feel like choice.

    And somewhere out there, someone is profiting.

    Selling quick fixes. Serotonin in capsules. Therapy subscriptions that ask you to open up to a chatbot. Self-care routines packaged into color-coded boxes and monthly fees.

    The world learns how to market your sadness back to you.

    “Treat yourself.”
    “Stay in.”
    “Don’t talk to anyone who doesn’t match your frequency.”

    But healing doesn’t happen in silence. It doesn’t happen alone. And it doesn’t come in a branded box.

    The trick is this: they want you to forget what sunlight feels like.

    What a street sounds like at 5 p.m. What it’s like to overhear someone else’s story in a crowded café. The rhythm of another person’s footsteps walking beside yours—not always in sync, but close enough to remind you you’re not the only one trying.

    They want you to forget that your body was built to move. That your voice still works. That laughter is not a betrayal of how hard things are—it’s a rebellion against the part of you that says you don’t deserve it.

    So go out. Even if it’s just to walk to the corner store. Even if you don’t talk to anyone. Even if you don’t know what to say.

    Live. Awkwardly. Incompletely. With trembling hands and mismatched socks.

    Because the moment you step outside, the spell begins to break.

    Not all at once. But enough.

    Enough to remember you were never meant to live this life in a room with the curtains drawn.

    Enough to remember that even the fog eventually lifts.

  • The Boy with the Paper Helmet

    The wind asked me who I was,
    and I answered with a whisper,
    changing shape as it passed through me.

    When I was five, I wanted to be a fireman. Not because I understood fire or duty, but because I saw a picture of a man holding a soot-covered dog, cradled like a baby rescued from a burning home. He wasn’t smiling. He looked tired. Human. And I thought—that’s what I want to be. Someone who shows up when everything is falling apart.

    Then I wanted to be an astronaut. Then a magician. A man who made pastries. A man who disappeared. Each dream lasted about a week, maybe two. My identity was a revolving door, and I greeted every version of myself with full belief.

    I made a helmet out of paper and wore it everywhere. It made me feel safe, like my future was solid. But paper dissolves in the rain. And the day it fell apart on the walk home from school, I cried—not because I lost the helmet, but because I thought I’d lost the one thing that made me real.

    Adulthood doesn’t arrive like a knock on the door.
    It’s a slow peeling away.
    You don’t become something—you unbecome all the things that didn’t last.

    I’m older now. On paper, I’m supposed to know who I am.
    But I still don’t.

    And maybe that’s not a flaw.

    Maybe that’s what it means to live in harmony with life itself.

    Wabi-sabi teaches that beauty is not found in the polished or the permanent, but in the things that wear down gently, that become softer with time, that carry the marks of all they’ve survived.

    A cracked bowl that holds warm soup.
    A weathered hand reaching for one more try.
    A dream that changes shape but still returns at night.

    I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.
    I still haven’t grown up.

    But now I see the charm in that. The quiet dignity of incompletion.

    I no longer chase labels.
    I just show up—some days tired, some days brave,
    almost always unfinished.

    Lessons from a Rain-Soaked Helmet

    • Wholeness is not the absence of cracks, but the presence of care.
    • You are allowed to be multiple things over time.
    • Growing doesn’t mean becoming more defined. It means becoming more real.

    Somewhere inside me, the boy still wears his paper helmet.
    It’s torn now, patched up, held together with tape and memory.

    But it fits better than it used to.
    And when the wind asks who I am,
    I smile and say:
    Still becoming.