2024 was supposed to be good: Part 2😭😭

 There was a new classmate named Nancy. She came in halfway through the year, soft-spoken but sharp, with eyes that noticed more than she said. For a while, it felt like maybe she understood the silence I was carrying. We didn’t talk much, but when we did, it felt like breathing. Like someone else knew how heavy things had gotten.

I kept showing up. I worked hard—not because I was okay, but because I didn’t know what else to do. School became a kind of anchor, something I could control when everything else felt like it was slipping. I poured myself into assignments, into routines, into trying to stay afloat.

And I made new friends. Or at least, I thought I did. We laughed, shared notes, sat together during breaks. It felt good, for a while. Like maybe I was rebuilding something. But when things got hard again—when the grief crept back in, when I needed someone to sit with me in the quiet—they didn’t stay. They didn’t ask. They didn’t see.

So I stopped expecting anyone to. I stopped hoping for the kind of connection that holds you when you fall apart. I learned to hold myself instead.

I didn’t become stronger. I didn’t find peace. I didn’t heal. But I kept going. I kept breathing. I kept showing up.

And maybe that’s enough. Maybe surviving is the kind of story that doesn’t need a glow-up. Maybe being here—still—is the most honest thing I can say.