The Season I Lost Myself In
You came into my life
like the first rain after heat-
not loud,
not violent,
just enough
to make everything feel alive again.
I didn’t question it.
I stood there,
letting you fall into me,
letting your presence
soak into places
I didn’t know were dry.
And slowly, without noticing-
I rooted myself
in your weather.
You became my season.
The air felt lighter with you.
The sky softer.
Even silence
had a kind of music in it.
I thought-
this is where I stay.
But storms don’t begin
with thunder.
They begin
with a shift in wind.
Something small.
Almost nothing.
A passing current
that feels colder
than it should.
I felt it.
In moments I couldn’t explain.
In skies that no longer
held me the same way.
In the quiet ache of standing
under the same rain
but not feeling chosen by it.
I told myself it was just weather.
That love could endure
a little storm.
So I stood still.
Even as the winds grew sharper.
Even as the clouds
started carrying names
that were not mine.
I stayed.
And slowly,
the ground beneath me
began to erode.
Not all at once-
never all at once-
just enough
for me to lose balance
without realizing
I was already falling.
I lost myself there.
In trying to remain steady
in a storm
I refused to acknowledge.
And when I finally left-
it wasn’t walking away.
It was being carried
by a flood
I had held back
for too long.
I didn’t leave cleanly.
I didn’t leave honestly.
I left like broken branches-
scattered,
directionless,
trying to escape
the weight of everything
I could not hold.
And in that chaos,
I found another sky.
Clearer.
Calmer.
Easier to breathe in.
No storms.
No questions.
No winds that made me doubt
where I stood.
I mistook that stillness
for peace.
I mistook that calm
for love.
But calm is not always home.
Sometimes
it is just the absence
of everything you ran from.
And when that sky shifted,
when its winds returned
to where they truly belonged-
I was left standing alone.
Again.
But this time,
there was no rain.
No storm.
No distraction.
Just silence.
And in that silence,
everything came back-
you,
the storms I ignored,
the pieces of myself I lost
trying to stay.
And the truth settled in
like a sky that refuses to change-
I had something real.
And I didn’t know
how to stand in it
without losing myself.
Now the rain still comes.
But I don’t wait for it anymore.
I don’t chase the clouds.
I don’t beg the wind
to return to me.
I stand-
on ground that is mine again,
under a sky
that no longer belongs to you.
Empty,
but steady.
And for the first time,
I let the storm pass
without trying to become it.
This is not peace.
Not yet.
But it is something else-
the quiet beginning
of a life
where I no longer lose myself
trying to survive
someone else’s weather.