Teach me how to be alone

Teach me how to be alone,

without fearing the silence,

without mistaking stillness

for loneliness,

without the whispers of my own mind

becoming louder than my heartbeat.

 

My head has carried

too many yesterdays

the hands that hurt me,

the lies that cheated me,

the words that scarred me,

the memories that carved themselves

into my bones.

 

For so long,

I asked the same question:

 

Why me?

 

Maybe I wasn’t made for love.

Maybe I loved too deeply.

Maybe I was too much,

or somehow never enough.

 

But some questions

are never answered,

because pain

is not a reflection of worth.

 

I have survived alot

I have survived domestic violence.

I have survived emotional manipulation,

mental cruelty,

physical abuse.

 

I watched trust wither

like flowers left without rain.

 

The girl who saw magic

in clouds,

who collected pretty flowers,

who lived inside daydreams,

slowly disappeared beneath storms

of anxiety,

until my own thoughts

became a place I feared.

 

Stress settled into my body,

turning into illness,

reminding me every day

that trauma leaves fingerprints

long after the bruises disappear.

 

There were moments

I believed

I had reached the end of myself.

 

Then one day,

I walked along a beach

with my family

and the man I love.

 

Without thinking,

I wandered away,

finding a quiet place

where only the sea could find me.

 

The salty breeze kissed my skin.

Seagulls called across the sky.

The waves breathed

in and out

as though the ocean itself

was teaching me how.

 

I stared into the distance,

and for the first time

in what felt like forever,

 

my mind

was quiet.

 

No screaming.

No racing thoughts.

No fear.

 

Just peace.

 

He found me there

and smiled.

 

“It’s just a distraction,”

he said.

 

Maybe he was right.

 

Or maybe

the ocean reminded me

of who I was

before the world convinced me

I had to be afraid.

 

He has hurt me,

because love is imperfect

and people make mistakes.

 

But this man

has also shown me

what love can look like

when it chooses honesty,

patience,

growth,

and understanding.

 

He sees the parts of me

I try to hide.

He studies my silence

like it deserves to be understood.

He knows the language

of my anxious heart.

 

And despite everything,

I know

I would never want

to spend this life

with anyone else.

 

Now I know

my healing

cannot depend

on another person’s arms.

 

I must learn

to calm the storm

within myself.

 

To regulate my heart.

To quiet my mind.

To become the woman

I know God created me to be.

 

To find peace

whether I stand beside the ocean

or sit alone in my room.

 

Because healing

is not forgetting.

 

It is breathing

even when the past

tries to steal the air from your lungs.

 

So, Lord,

 

teach me to breathe again.

 

Teach me to find You

in the silence,

to hear Your voice

above the noise,

to trust that what was broken

can become beautiful.

 

Place love at the centre.

Place You at the centre.

 

And when my heart

finally finds its way home,

 

let it be a home

built not on fear,

but on faith,

 

not on trauma,

but on peace,

 

not on the wounds

others gave me,

 

but on the woman

I fought so hard

to become.