At 2:44 a.m., I woke with a loop running.
Not about anyone else, really — a loop about me.
About the version of myself that used to say yes too easily,
the one I now look back on with equal parts affection and critique.
The mind wants to justify.
It wants to replay old scenes,
to argue the old arguments,
to defend the person I no longer am
from a judge who no longer exists.
I felt tight.
A twinge in my knee,
that old physical whisper that says,
“You’re bracing again.”
I began to write, not to explain but to see.
And something loosened.
The truth was simple:
I wasn’t angry at anyone else.
I was angry at myself —
or rather, at that former self
who gave so much without calculation,
who acted from instinct and hope,
who lived through a worldview
I no longer inhabit.
But I realized something as I wrote:
that generosity I’ve been criticizing
was not a flaw —
it was a gift I once gave myself.
A part of the path
that led me here.
Here meaning this life I’m actually living.
These walks.
These mornings.
This clarity.
This steadiness.
It struck me that the child in me
was the one demanding absolution,
but the adult —
the one who chose this season of travel and reinvention —
didn’t need forgiveness at all.
The adult just needed the reminder:
“You’re here now.
You chose this.”
And something in my body agreed.
My breath reset.
My knee quieted.
The loop dissolved,
like mist burning off under morning light.
The past version of myself didn’t do anything wrong.
He simply did what he knew.
I’m the one who knows differently now.
I’m not closing the book —
but the chapter has softened.
And I want to sit with that softness a while,
as one sits with a poem
that has finally revealed
what it was trying to say.
WE&P by: EZorrillaMc&Co.
Travel in Life 