Tired but not finished

 "Hey you out there with the moonlit eyes, and darkness pouring from your fists. I see the tremor you hide, the armor you wear beneath your smile, the way you hold the night like it is both a weapon and a lullaby. You learned to carry thunder so it would not fall on anyone else. You learned to glow without asking permission from the dawn. You are not too much. You are exactly enough to light the horizon and still keep a sanctuary for yourself.

I know you are hurting, and I know it feels like life will not give you a break, like the calendar keeps circling your name and calling it a test. None of this pain is proof that you are unworthy. It is proof that you have lived. Every scar is a sentence you survived. Every breath is a receipt for the quiet victories no one applauded. Even when the world looked away, you stayed. That counts for more than any witness could measure.

You are tired, and I believe you. I believe the weight behind your eyelids and the ache that sits down in your bones before you do. I believe the silent bargains you make with morning just to keep going, the brave way you keep a promise to show up even when showing up feels like climbing a mountain with your heart. Weariness is not failure; it is a ledger of love spent on people and places that often forgot to pay you back. You are allowed to rest and still be righteous.

Your battles are silently screaming from your lips, and even in your quiet I hear a symphony of survival. I hear the long nights that taught you to count your breaths like stars. I hear the rooms where you learned to fold your voice into a small, safe shape. Those rooms do not own you anymore. Your voice is not a secret; it is a bridge to a future that finally knows your name and says it kindly.

You have one relentless soul, not because pain made you hard, but because love made you unbreakable. You are forged, not frozen. You bend like a willow in windstorms and somehow still flower in late seasons. When others mistook your softness for surrender, you were only switching strategies—from bleeding to blooming, from enduring to choosing, from apologizing to arriving.

Your will cannot be broken; it only takes detours, and every detour taught you a new kind of strength. You turned slammed doors into doorways by learning which hinges to oil and which keys to throw away. You built courage from leftovers and hope from the smallest spark. You are the kind of miracle that refuses to make a scene about it, the kind that keeps living until living becomes loud enough to hear.

Remember this when you feel like you cannot go on: pause is not defeat. Sitting down is not surrender. Rest is an act of devotion to the life you are still building. The body that carried you through the worst deserves gentleness on the days when even a shower feels like a summit. You are allowed to be careful with yourself without asking permission from anyone who never learned how to be careful with you.

You are allowed to put down the armor and still be safe because safety is not always metal; sometimes it is a sentence that says no, not today. Sometimes it is a boundary that closes at dusk and opens at dawn. Sometimes it is the friend who answers on the first ring, or the rule you made to leave when your spirit starts whispering. You do not have to bleed to be believed. You do not have to break to be seen.

You owe no one an explanation for how you heal, only a commitment to the truth that heals you. Your privacy is not secrecy; it is stewardship. Let them gossip about the mystery while you water the roots of your becoming. Let them wonder how you glow; you will be busy tending the source, busy choosing peace that does not require you to disappear to keep it.

When the night feels endless, take inventory of every light you already carry. You have a laugh that unties knots, a kindness that interrupts harm, a patience that plants forests, a courage that returns even when it is not invited. You have a spine that refuses to retire and a tenderness that still believes in morning even after midnight tried to convince you otherwise. You have proof—every single day you kept breathing through the noise.

Tell your fear the truth in a voice that does not shake just because your hands do. Tell it you have stood in doorways with nothing but your name and still found a way inside your own life. Tell it you know how to gather yourself from floors that others insisted were final. Tell it that you remember every time you thought it was over and it wasn’t. You are the expert on your survival.

If your past returns, let the threshold be wise. Some days you will open the door and let healing sit at the table beside you. Some days you will lock it and let grief talk through the wood until it runs out of sound. Both choices are brave. Both choices are yours. Healing is not a race; it is a room-by-room reclamation of a house that belongs to you.

Keep the promises you make to yourself with the faithfulness you gave to others. Put your needs at the top of the list and watch your life stop feeling like leftovers. Drink water before the headache. Say no before the resentment. End before you are emptied. Choose the version of you who will thank you tomorrow, not the crowd who will forget you tonight.

Do not mistake loneliness for failure. Growing out of old rooms sometimes means walking hallways alone until new doors recognize you. Solitude is not a punishment; it is a greenhouse. It is where the parts of you that were always rushed finally learn how to breathe between beats. The right people will meet you where your peace lives, not where your panic used to perform.

If any voice calls you broken, answer with everything that still works. Your hands still lift, your eyes still find the moon on cloudy nights, your feet still know the rhythm of forward. Your heart still signs its name at the bottom of each day. You still know how to begin again, even when beginning looks like three deep breaths and a glass of water.

Let grief have seasons without letting it steal your calendar. Some days are for planting, some for pruning, some for lying in the soft dirt and remembering you are part of something that knows what to do with rain. You do not have to be harvest every day. You only have to be honest. The soil beneath you has held worse storms and still held on.

Call your strength back from every place that forgot to thank it. Gather your light from every moment you dimmed it to keep the peace. Reclaim your name from every mouth that used it without care. You are not a hallway for other people’s exit strategies. You are a home that chooses its guests and a hearth that does not apologize for the temperature that saves you.

And when the next wave comes, greet it with the memory of every shore you have already found. Stand where the water meets your ankles and remember how many times you thought you would dissolve and didn’t. The sea keeps its promises to those who learn its breath. In and out. In and out. You are not the storm. You are the tide that returns.

Hey you with the moonlit eyes, hear me when I say this: you are allowed to rest and you are allowed to rise, in the same hour if needed. You are allowed to carry both the lesson and the lullaby. You are allowed to walk forward with a past and still not be defined by it. Put your hand over your heart and listen. That steady drum is not asking you to be perfect. It is asking you to stay.

You are tired, but not finished. You are hurting, but not hopeless. You are in the middle, which is where the bravest stories find their shape. Breathe. Drink water. Speak softly to the part of you that held the heaviest bags without complaint. Then open your fists, let the darkness run out like old ink, and watch your hands learn a new language—one that builds, one that blesses, one that opens the door to a life that finally fits the size of your spirit."

~ Steve De'lano Garcia