When I pressed publish my hands were still, but something ancient in me broke open.
Not the kind of breaking that shatters, the kind that releases a held breath I didn’t know I’d been holding since the first night fear learned my name.
I cried for the years that carried this quietly, or the rooms where I survived without witnesses,
or the sentences that waited while life kept happening anyway.
I cried because the story is no longer only mine. Because it stepped out of my chest and learned how to stand on its own.
Because fear, once so loud, is now bound between covers, named, seen, and no longer driving.
This is not grief. This is not weakness. This is the sound of something finished without being diminished.
This is the body saying: You made it through. This is the soul replying: Yes. And I left a light behind.
Tonight, the world is unchanged, but somewhere, a stranger will open a page and feel less alone.
And that was always the point.