I don’t know when the shift happened, only that the air inside me smells different now. Like autumn after a heavy burn. Something quiet and gentle died in me this year.

I used to be a collector of stories. I used to look at strangers with wide eyes, wondering what made their hearts beat, what broke them, what healed them, always offering a piece of my own spirit just to build a bridge across the room.

But bridge-building takes wood. It takes bone. It takes light I no longer have to burn for people who only came to sit by the fire and leave when the ash grew cold.

(A pause, shifting in tone—more resolute)

Now? Now, curiosity feels like an invoice I can’t pay. To know someone deeply— to listen, to navigate, to untangle their storms— it is too emotionally taxing. It is simply no longer worth the currency of my peace.

Do not mistake this distance for hatred. Do not mistake it for a cold shoulder. It is not bitterness; it is a sanctuary. It is the realization that my energy is finite, and I am done pouring water into sieves hoping they’ll learn to hold it.lc mic

When you stop reaching out into the noise, your hands finally become empty enough to reach upward.

In the quiet created by all those closed doors, a new kind of hunger grew. I seek the divine more than I ever have. Not in the loud, performative spaces, but in the silent spaces between my own ribs. In the dusk. In the tide. In the unyielding ground that asks nothing of me except to exist.

I used to search for meaning in the eyes of people. Now, I look higher. Now, I look deeper.

What died in me this year wasn’t my ability to love— it was my willingness to exhaust myself for things that do not endure. I am not shrinking. I am just saving my soul for what created it.