Peace is Quiet

Quieter than I thought it would be

I’m missing something— that spark that makes me write;

That deep seated need to express what I’ve learned.

I honestly just don’t feel like I have the same depth as before

I could hurt and turn it into the longest essay, I could see a beautiful painting and think of longing and it was at the tip of my fingers; easier than walking.

I still write, but they’re all about things I’m not sure I want to share with the world;

They’re incomplete paragraphs,

They’re words left unfinished as my pen trailed off when I got distracted,

It’s confusing.

I’m not used to it, but I’m not precisely sad about it because I’m happier now, more content, more steady.

My feelings used to be so messy and powerful that they weighed me down, that I was drowning in them without even knowing it,

Now they’re still there, but they’re not in charge of me and what I do(

They don’t suffocate me in the way they once did;

They sit with me when I want them to, they don’t pull me into the deep end, I bring them along with me in what I want to do.

I no longer drown in things that I don’t understand,

I float, the way I wasn’t sure I could before, the way I wasn’t sure I deserved to.

I miss that intensity, and how easy it made writing; because it was familiar; but at the same time I don’t, I like the new voice I’m finding.

Feeling everything was powerful, and it made me convince myself that I was living, but now I see that I was mostly stuck in my head,

I wasn’t living outside of my mind.

And the truth is, I miss how easy it was to write, because writing was the one thing I was sure I could do,

But now I see that I’m good at other things.

I see that I’m allowed to be bad at things before I’m good at them, you know?

I do miss the certainty though

The rightness I felt when my pen met paper,

But that’s not the same because I’m somehow more certain of who I am in the process of learning who I’m becoming.

I just miss that ability to put myself in neat labels,

I’m a messy person, but at least my mind was organized;

Now it feels like someone has come in and rearranged everything.

I know where to find it, but it’s not the same paths I used to take to get what I needed.

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I’m at peace, the peace that I know I could only ever find in Christ

The things that used to trigger me and make me want, are now things that even when I’m painting images of longing for them in my head, I know they’re not what I truly want or need, and for the first time I’m not lying to myself.

I see things clearly, who I was and who I am,

I’m not a neat book trope or cardboard cutout character,

I’m not my favorite fictional girls anymore.

I’m Rohi, and for the first time in a long time, that’s not just enough, it makes me happy.