John R. Miles

That's the threshold.

And next, we're walking straight through it together.

Here's the thing about choosing yourself again.

It never starts as a grand declaration.

It starts as a crack, a tiny internal rupture that says, I can't keep doing this.

Sometimes it shows up as exhaustion that you can't push through anymore.

Sometimes it's anger, the quiet kind, the kind that tells you you've ignored too many truths.

Sometimes it's grief.

Sometimes it's clarity that feels like it came out of nowhere.

but underneath all of it is the same sentence, I'm done abandoning myself.

And once that line appears, it never goes away.

It doesn't show up when the calendar is empty or when you've had a good night's sleep or when the people around you are finally ready for you to change.

It usually arrives in the middle of a mess

when you're holding everything together, when you're bending in 12 directions at once, when you're trying so hard to keep the peace that your soul is the only thing not invited.

Choosing yourself again rarely arrives as relief.

At first, it arrives as truth, and truth is disruptive.

It's the moment your soul stops negotiating.

For years, your soul will whisper.

It will nudge.

It will give taps.