Through the Haze
The first step to healing is recognizing illusion versus truth.
There is a hush right before clarity arrives — a pause where the fog loosens its grip and your breath finally reaches the bottom of your lungs. In that stillness, you can hear your own name again. Not the one they pinned on you, not the one their stories demanded — your real one. This is where the haze begins to lift.
Illusion is a skilled performer. It borrows the language of love, wraps it in ritual, and asks you to trade your instincts for access. But love that requires you to be confused is not love — it is control wearing cologne. Real love never needs you disoriented to keep you close; it meets you in the open and stays when the lights are on.
Grief will try to convince you that the fantasy was safer than the truth. It wasn’t. Safety without honesty is a locked room with velvet curtains. When you choose truth, you choose windows. You choose the air that hurts a little when it hits your lungs because it hasn’t been filtered through someone else’s needs.
You are allowed to mourn the version of you that built altars to excuses. You are allowed to be tender with the parts that learned survival as a second language. And you are allowed — starting now — to stand in a life that doesn’t make you prove your worth just to be seen.
Step forward. Let the dawn burn off what never loved you. Your nervous system will shake; your spirit will steady. Clarity is not loud — it simply doesn’t leave. When you feel that quiet consistency, trust it. It’s not the haze returning; it’s you.
Stay powerful.