It feels less like life and more like a scene that keeps replaying.
Like I’m stuck inside Insurgent — not even the whole movie, just that one moment. The test. The glass. The desperation.
I can see it so clearly.
She’s trapped inside a simulation, forced to face fear after fear, reality bending around her. Everything feels real — too real — until something inside her shifts. She pauses, breath shaky, eyes searching, and then she does the simplest, most impossible thing.
She taps the glass.
“This isn’t real.”
And suddenly, it cracks. The world fractures, splinters, gives way to something else.
Another reality. Another test. Another fight.
And it keeps happening, over and over, until she’s finally pulled out… only to find that the real world isn’t much kinder.
That’s what this feels like.
Like I’m standing inside my own version of that simulation, chest tight, heart racing, wanting so badly to just tap on something — anything — and say, this isn’t real. To break it open. To wake up into a softer life, one where things make sense again. Where everything is light and easy and full of “sunshine and roses.”
But I can’t tap the glass.
Because this is real.
And the truth is… even in that movie, breaking the illusion didn’t save her. It just brought her back to a different kind of battle. She still had to fight. Still had to survive. Still had to keep going, even when she was tired, even when she got it wrong.
Maybe that’s what this is.
Not living — not yet — but surviving.
I wanted this, didn’t I? I wanted to find myself. To become my own person again. But no one really tells you what that looks like when it’s not pretty. When it’s not peaceful or inspiring, but messy and loud and terrifying. When your mind won’t stop looping, begging for escape, begging for things to just be okay.
And every morning, you open your eyes hoping something has shifted — only to find the same reality waiting for you.
Unchanged. Heavy. Real.
It’s exhausting.
There’s this hollow feeling, like something inside me has cracked but hasn’t quite healed yet. And I keep wondering… how long does it take? How long until I feel whole again? Until I don’t feel like I’m just holding pieces of myself together, hoping they don’t fall apart?
I’ve spent so much of my life trying to fill that space with other people. Trying to feel whole through someone else. And I know now — I know — that it doesn’t work. It never has. It just delays the moment where I have to face myself.
But facing myself is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.
Because I’m scared.
I’m so, so scared.
And yet… somewhere underneath all of that fear, there’s something else. Something small, but stubborn.
A spark.
Because I don’t just want to survive this — I want to become something because of it.
I want to reach a point where I don’t need someone else to hold me together. Where peace isn’t something I borrow, but something I carry. Where I can sit in my own presence and feel… enough.
Strong. Whole. Mine.
I’ve seen women who have that. Women who stand solid in themselves, who don’t chase, who don’t beg, who don’t break when things fall apart. And I used to think they just were that way.
But maybe they weren’t.
Maybe they went through this exact place — this confusing, painful, terrifying in-between — and just didn’t stop.
I want that.
Not to be better than anyone else… but to be better than who I am right now. To look back at this version of me — scared, lost, overwhelmed — and know that I didn’t stay here.
That I kept going.
That I fought.
That I became someone my daughter could look at one day and feel proud of. Not because I was perfect, but because I didn’t give up. Because I did the hard things. Because I chose to grow, even when it hurt.
Because I chose me.
And maybe that’s the truth I need to hold onto:
There is no glass to tap. No shortcut out. No sudden wake-up into a perfect life.
There’s just this.
This moment. This fear. This fight.
And the quiet, powerful decision… to keep going anyway.
