Never Going Back

I can’t name the day it left—

that feeling of everything being in place,

of answers sitting neatly in other people’s mouths,

of truth arriving prepackaged

in textbooks, in headlines, in steady adult voices

that never seemed to tremble.

Back then, the world felt held together—

like a promise I didn’t know I’d made

to believe what I was given.

I trusted the map because it was handed to me,

trusted the voices because they spoke in unison,

trusted that someone, somewhere,

was making sure it all made sense.

There was comfort in not asking.

A softness in certainty.

A kind of innocence that didn’t know its own name.

I mourn that version of me—

the one who didn’t look twice,

who didn’t feel the need to read between lines

or listen for what wasn’t being said.

Because loss didn’t come all at once.

It came like a thread pulled loose,

then another,

until the whole fabric shifted in my hands.

A contradiction here.

A silence there.

A truth that didn’t quite fit

but refused to go away.

And suddenly, the world I stood in

felt thinner.

Like walls I thought were solid

were painted over glass,

and behind them—

movement, distortion, something watching back.

I didn’t shatter.

It was quieter than that.

More like a slow waking

you can’t fall back asleep from.

Now everything carries an echo.

Every answer bends under its own weight.

Every certainty feels rehearsed,

like it’s been spoken too many times

to still be real.

And I try, sometimes—

I really do—

to remember what it felt like

to just accept things.

To hear and believe

without the aftertaste of doubt.

But once you’ve seen it—

the seams, the cracks, the careful design—

you don’t get to go back.

That’s the part no one tells you:

the knowing doesn’t feel like power.

It feels like absence.

Like something gentle has gone missing

from the way you move through the world.

So I grieve it—

not loudly,

not all at once—

but in small, quiet moments

when I catch myself questioning everything,

and realize-

there was a time

I didn’t.