haelxtii:

I don’t think people really understand what it’s like to grow up always feeling alone to have to teach yourself how to survive, how to think, how to move through life on your own terms. No one understands how loud your silence can be when your quietness has always been mistaken for strength. They don’t see how exhausting it is to only have yourself to depend on to know that if you fall too low, you might lose everything, even yourself.

Being alone has been both my greatest pain and my greatest teacher. It’s broken me and built me. It’s emptied me and filled me all at once. It’s brought me tears and joy, weakness and strength. It’s shaped how I think, how I love, and how I move through the world. Being alone feels empty, but somehow it’s also where I found the deepest parts of me.