なみのうえ
みんなおなじく
ふかくゆれる
nami no ue / minna onajiku / fukaku yureru
on the waves / we all sway the same / deep beneath
Most people think I am fine. I have a polite smile that fits any weather. I know where to stand in a doorway and how long to hold eye contact. I answer messages on time. I ask questions at the right moments. From the outside, that looks like ease. Inside, it is a choreography I memorized to keep from falling apart in public.
Here is the part almost no one sees.
There are mornings I wake up with a brick on my chest. No reason, no story, just weight. I lie there staring at the hairline crack in the ceiling that looks like a small river losing patience. My phone buzzes in the kitchen. A tram grinds along the street. Coffee smells like a promise I cannot keep. I fold myself upright anyway and put water on to boil.
On bad days the tap runs and sounds too loud, like a crowd I cannot leave. I watch the kettle breathe and think, if I can make it to the first cup, maybe the day will soften. The kettle whistles. I pour too fast. The first sip burns my tongue. I pretend that is what I wanted.
I go outside because walls begin to tilt if I stay in. The city is a wet book. Last night’s rain left a skin on everything, a gloss that makes the street seem new and used at the same time. I walk to the bakery that keeps early hours. The woman behind the counter wears a sweater the color of moss and slides me a paper bag with a nod. The bread is still warm, sighing through the paper. I break the end off and eat it with my fingers as if it might anchor me. It helps a little.
The truth is I struggle. Most days. Not a dramatic movie kind of struggling, not a single clean arc that ends in triumph. Mine is the quiet kind that leaks into corners. I forget to answer messages because the words feel heavy as coins. I wash the same cup twice because I cannot remember if I already did. In the grocery store I stand too long in front of the tomatoes, not because I care which ones are best, but because choosing anything feels like borrowing a future that is not ready yet.
Once, I cried in the bathroom at work with the tap running hard. Not loud sobs. A slow spill. My forehead pressed to the cool mirror. I pressed my fingertip to the glass and tried to breathe exactly as long as the red light blinked on the hand dryer. In. Out. In. Out. I walked back to my desk and nobody knew. Someone said a joke about a spreadsheet and I laughed in the correct place, a little too bright, which is how the body keeps a secret.
I used to think this meant I was broken. I imagined other people as steady ships with good captains, charting clean lines across blue water. I imagined myself as a rowboat with a slow leak. Then I started paying better attention. I saw a man in a suit sitting in a parked car at lunch, both hands on the wheel, eyes closed, mouth moving to a prayer only he could hear. I saw a mother in the pharmacy touch the top of a medicine box with the tenderness you reserve for skin. I saw the barista pause halfway to the grinder and blink hard, like someone turning back from a cliff in her mind. It dawned on me that everyone is rowing. We just learned how to keep our faces dry.
There is a particular afternoon that keeps returning to me. Winter clutching the last light. I took my laundry to the basement room two streets over because my machine upstairs had given up. The room smelled like warm metal and lemon and a little like sorrow. The washers were old and honest. A sign on the wall said NO DETERGENT IN DRYERS, which felt both obvious and helpful. A boy about eight waited with his grandmother. He kept tapping the glass whenever their machine spun fastest, as if he could drum the clothes into finishing sooner. The grandmother watched me the way old people watch anyone alone, not unkindly. She said something about the weather. I said something about the weather and we both pretended we had said more.
When my machine finished, the door stuck. I pulled and it resisted. For a moment, ridiculous panic. Trapped socks. Trapped shirts. Trapped me. I put my palm flat to the glass and waited. It gave. Heat breathed out and the steam fogged my glasses. I remember that detail because it made me laugh. Small human held hostage by a door, saved by fog. Sometimes the day gives you a softness when you expect teeth.
There are other days that are all teeth. I walk home in the rain without an umbrella because the alternative is standing still, and standing still feels like thinking too loudly. I drop a plate. It breaks like it wanted to. I sweep up the pieces and find a sliver ten minutes later glinting under the chair, the way pain hides and waits. I eat ramen over the sink, the burn a clean message. I go to bed early because being horizontal is easier than being brave.
I am telling you this because I am almost sure it is also your story, just with different scenery. You look steady from far away. Up close, you have your own hairline cracks. You carry small splinters of old afternoons no one else remembers. You forget to breathe when the kettle sings. You have a certain step you take before opening the door to a room where you must be composed. You have learned which coat pocket hides the folded napkin you cry into quietly.
It took me too long to understand that struggling does not disqualify me from being human. It is the requirement. The secret curriculum. The one subject everyone is enrolled in and nobody posts about. The most common thing we do is carry ourselves through days that are heavier than they look.
Somewhere along the way I started treating struggle differently. I stopped calling it failure. Names have gravity. I started calling it weather. Weather moves through. Weather returns the sky to itself. When the heaviness comes, I make it tea. I say, sit here, but I will not let you drive. I make small food. Rice. An egg. A pear sliced thin enough to see the light through it. I hand wash a shirt to listen to the water find its own story in the basin. I walk until I forget I am walking. I count the breaths between the tram bell and the doors opening. I go to the river and watch it hold everything without asking where it came from. I sleep with the window open a little so the night can do some work while I am not watching.
I know this sounds delicate. Some days are not delicate. Some days are rough wood. I have snapped at people I love. I have ignored calls I should have answered. I have scrolled until my eyes hurt because I could not bear my own company. I have said I am fine when what I meant was I am a field that needs rain. I forgive myself slowly, the way winter forgives a stubborn branch.
There is one evening I keep for courage. Early summer. Heat pressing a thumbprint into the city. I left the apartment because the walls were buzzing. I walked to the park by the river and sat on a bench that had a small brass plaque screwed into it for a man who must have loved this place. A kid was learning to ride a bicycle there, knees skinned, jaw set. He would pedal, steer badly, panic, tip, cry, get up, try again. His father stayed two steps back with open hands, not touching, just a tide ready to catch. After one fall the boy looked at his father and said, voice full of fury, I cannot do this. The father said softly, you already are. The boy got on like the sentence was a key. He wobbled toward a more honest balance and then found it. The river had the courtesy to keep moving like this was the most normal miracle in the world.
On the walk home I felt something in my chest loosen. It occurred to me that maybe success is exactly that, wobble included. Maybe the life worth trusting is not the one that keeps the bike perfectly upright but the one that forgives the tilt while carried forward anyway.
I want to end honestly and also with light. Both are possible. The truth is that I still have hard mornings. I still stand in kitchens pressing my palms into the counter as if trying to steady a small earthquake. I still think terrible little thoughts. I still check if the windows are real. I am not cured, because being human is not a sickness. I am practicing.
Here is what practice looks like.
I sweep the floor slowly enough to hear the broom. I open the window when the bread is in the oven so the warm air can kiss the cold. I text back, even if I start with I have no words, I just wanted you to know I am here. I keep a towel by the sink that is allowed to be cried into. I put a note on the fridge that says Drink water, take the walk, the sky is different today. I say no when I mean no. I say yes when I mean yes even if it scares me. I let people carry a corner of the weight when my arms are tired. I let them. That is new.
Most people do not know this about me. They do not have to. You know it now, and maybe that is enough for both of us. You have your own versions, your own brick, your own river in the ceiling. I hope you tell someone. I hope you are met with the kind of listening that does not try to fix you. I hope you eat warm bread with your fingers and let the steam fog your glasses and laugh because it makes you look like proof that softness can still happen to a person.
Here is the very good news, saved for last because it deserves its own light. The longer I live with the truth that everyone struggles, the less alone I feel, and the more possible this whole thing becomes. We are not failing. We are learning the weather. We are finding the chair inside the day where we can sit and put the brick down for a while. We are letting the bike wobble toward its own kind of grace. We are meeting in small ways. A nod in a laundromat. A pear sliced thin. A door that finally gives.
This morning I woke before the alarm. The crack in the ceiling looked less like a river and more like a map that was not finished yet. I lay there and heard the kettle even though it had not started. I felt the weight on my chest and it felt lighter, not because it was gone, but because it is not only mine to carry anymore. Somewhere, you are breathing too. Somewhere, someone is counting to ten in a parked car and then going inside and finding the day softer than feared. Somewhere, a child is pedaling toward balance.
The sun touched the corner of the window. I got up. The water boiled. The air smelled like beginning. I poured, waited, tasted. It was good. Not perfect. Good. That is enough.
If you felt yourself somewhere in this, stay. We will keep each other company. We will pass the warm bread. We will let the day do some work while we are not looking. And when the weather clears, as it always does, we will go outside, stand in that honest light, and know we did not do this alone.
life 