A poem.

Doesn’t something feel a little odd today?

Oh, let me take a stroll today.

Doesn’t the night feel a little off today?

Oh, let me relax my racing heart today.

Didn’t you talk with me today?

Oh, I wasn’t caring today.

Don’t the clouds feel blurry today?

Oh, I’m crying today.

~Isha

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A little odd night. was originally published in Heartline Publications on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One that smells of pine and cypress

Outside, autumn feels foreign. I do not know these places, these trees, these roads. I did not grow up here, did not gather acorns, did not lie among the leaves. Yet here I am.

Beneath a grey sky, there is a forest on this land. A forest without yellow leaves. An evergreen forest.

The air smells of pine. I take a deep breath.

Memories.

A long walking trail along the cliff. Below, the sea is so blue it is almost black. And seagulls soaring proudly high above the waves, glancing at me in surprise: how did I get all the way up here?

And if you are lucky with the weather, you may find yourself there just as a cloud envelops the mountains. This is no mist. Everything around you is milky white. The scent of cypress bursts forth, permeating the damp air.

I take a deep breath. Then and now. I look up and meet someone’s eyes. Without words.

The light, tender touch of a hand against my cheek.

Autumn in a foreign land? This is another autumn of mine. Beneath the same sky.

Text and illustration by Kateryna Fedotova

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A Foreign Autumn was originally published in Heartline Publications on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

To everyone who is going through life right now.

Some times it feels like life is determined to break you.

Everything feels heavy. The days are long, the nights are longer, and even when you’re surrounded by people, there’s a loneliness you cannot explain. You laugh when you’re expected to laugh, answer when someone calls your name, and go about your day as though nothing is wrong. But somewhere inside you, you’re tired, tired in a way that sleep cannot fix.

And the hardest part is not always what you’re going through; sometimes, it’s the feeling that nobody truly understands it. You try to explain, but the words never seem enough. You want someone to see past your smile, to notice the silence between your words, to ask if you’re really okay and stay long enough to hear the answer.

But life goes on; people have their own problems, their own battles, their own reasons for being distracted. And so, you learn to carry things quietly. You become so good at saying, “I’m fine,” that people stop asking questions. Eventually, even you begin to wonder whether your pain matters when nobody seems to notice it.

But it does.

Your pain matters, even when nobody sees it. Your struggles matter, even when you cannot explain them, and you matter, even on the days when you have nothing to show for your efforts, nothing to celebrate, and no good news to share.

I wish I could tell you that life will suddenly make sense, that tomorrow will be kinder, or that everything you’ve lost will find its way back to you. But I cannot promise you that. What I can tell you is that this moment, no matter how dark it feels, is not the whole story of your life.

You have not seen every place your feet will take you, or met every person who will love you, or heard every laugh that will escape your mouth, or experienced every ordinary, beautiful day that will one day become a memory you hold close.

There is still so much life ahead of you that you cannot imagine from where you stand today.

So, please, do not measure your entire existence by the weight of this season. Do not decide that life has nothing left to offer simply because you cannot see what comes next, and don’t think that you’re failing now simply because you have no proof of effort just yet.

You’re allowed to be tired, you’re allowed to admit that things are hard, you’re allowed to take a breath, ask for help, and find your way one small step at a time.

And if nobody has told you this lately, let these words find you where you are, the light really does exist at the end of this long and dark tunnel.

So hang in there, you’ll be just fine

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A Little Hope For The Hard Days. was originally published in Heartline Publications on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When the masculine and feminine within us find their way back to each other.

My dear Phoebus,

For a long time now, I have been writing, deleting, rewriting, and deleting this letter all over again. You keep asking me about Her. You want to know how she is, you worry, and I don’t know — or perhaps, until now, I didn’t know — whether I should answer you. I didn’t know what I should tell you and what I shouldn’t. Somewhere deep inside, I blamed you for leaving and leaving her alone. I blamed you for abandoning her in the jungle, with dangers lurking everywhere, and so I didn’t want to tell you about her because I believed you didn’t truly care.

Until I understood…

There were so many things I wanted to share with you from time to time, so many stories I wanted to tell you, but I hated you and blamed you. You showed interest, but I didn’t believe it was real. I was afraid to share them with you because I didn’t know how you would react. The fear that you might continue to be absent and indifferent overwhelmed me. I believed you were no longer there for Her and that, by keeping you in the dark, I was protecting her.

A long time has passed since the last time you saw her. You grew apart. You became two strangers — or at least, that is how She felt.

Once, she saw you every day. Once, you were there beside her whenever she needed you. With you, she felt safe, secure, protected. You would never let anyone hurt her. You would step forward to defend her, to protect her.

You knew how to read her. You knew what would bring her joy, and you were always there to offer it to her. You were always there to make her smile. To make her feel comfortable, free. You were there to fill every empty space within her and make her feel whole, and through that, she felt strong. She felt special.

But when your paths separated, all of that disappeared. You left, and she began to feel alone and unprotected. Exposed to every danger that might be lurking around her. She didn’t know how to deal with cruelty, with cunning, how to avoid the traps, how to keep her feet on the ground when everything around her felt as though it were collapsing.

And so she changed.

You once knew a girl who was tender, sweet, and innocent. But that girl, in order to survive, was forced to change. She became wild, defensive. She embraced control as her only solution. Her body tensed. Her heart froze. Denial took root inside her, and fear flowed through her veins. And as time passed, the events around her made her hide even more, even deeper, until she closed the doors to life.

But you know very well that this girl had something.

That something drew you to her. That something made you notice her, and that something was her radiance. Her Light.

Her radiance may have been confined within four walls, but it never ceased to exist. She closed herself away, but she never went dark. And like a warrior, she fought her own battle to step back out into the world and fight. She fought her own battle to find everything you had once given her.

At first, she remembered you and searched for you desperately. She searched for you until she realized she had been looking in the wrong direction, and then she looked into her mirror.

She looked at her reflection, and it was as though something inside her awakened. As though a part of her that had been asleep for so long finally stirred. She stood there for hours, looking at herself. Hours thinking about what life had been like beside you, but also beside every masculine presence that had stood by her.

For her, events, people, and circumstances are like a puzzle. That day, she gathered all the pieces and put them together, one by one, until she understood. Until she realized.

She realized what qualities make her who she is. Which qualities unconsciously govern her. The ones she has adopted without meaning to, and which ones she now consciously chooses to keep.

It was a day when she cried a lot.

Digging deep hurts. Truths can bring you to your knees, but realizations set you free.

After that night, she was no longer the same. She looked into her mirror with confidence. She recognized you and embraced you because she realized that you had never left. That you had always been there; she simply couldn’t see you because she had forgotten what it meant to look through the eyes of the Soul.

But now she remembers.

Now she remembers, and she moves forward.

If you want to return to her life, come. Not because she needs you, but because together, now, you can build something solid. Something beautiful, something filled with love.

You did not leave her out of cruelty. You showed her what She Is, and then you left her to find it within herself. To discover it.

You never stopped wondering how she was. You stayed awake with worry, but you knew that only through this path could she evolve. You gave her your hand at the beginning to give her courage, faith, and strength, and when the time came, you let it go so that you could come back and take it again when she had matured. When she would no longer hold on to you out of need, but out of love.

I am sorry that I judged you, but I could not understand.

Only when I saw the smile returning to her lips, her eyes beginning to shine again, and her energy radiating once more, did I understand.

I hope your return brings even greater Light, acceptance, and love.

With appreciation,

The Observer

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My dear Phoebus, was originally published in Heartline Publications on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There comes a moment in life when you stop explaining.

Not because you suddenly become cold.

Not because you stopped caring.

Not because you woke up one morning and decided that everyone can go figure themselves out.

It happens quietly.

Almost embarrassingly quietly.

You answer a message and realize you don't have the energy to explain yourself for the fifth time.

Someone disappoints you, and instead of preparing a speech in your head about how they hurt you, you simply think, Okay.

Someone crosses a boundary you've mentioned before, and you don't feel the familiar urge to convince them to understand why it matters.

You just step back.

And somewhere in that silence, something inside you says:

I’ve got nothing left to give here.

Maybe that's what this is.

Maybe this is where my last fuck to give lies.

Not dramatically.

Not angrily.

Just here.

Buried beneath all the times I tried to understand.

All the times I gave another chance.

All the times I said, "It's fine," when it wasn't.

All the times I made excuses for people because I could see where they were coming from.

All the times I stayed longer than I wanted to because leaving felt cruel.

All the times I thought caring meant enduring.

I used to think having a big heart meant you had to keep your door open.

Keep forgiving.

Keep explaining.

Keep showing up.

Keep giving people access to you simply because you loved them.

But nobody tells you that sometimes a big heart needs a locked door.

Not forever.

Just long enough to remember that you live there too.

Because there is a strange kind of exhaustion that doesn't come from doing too much.

It comes from caring too much about things that keep asking you to abandon yourself.

And you don't always notice it happening.

You just become quieter.

You stop checking.

You stop asking.

You stop chasing.

You stop wondering why they didn't choose you.

You stop rehearsing conversations that may never happen.

You stop trying to make someone see your worth.

And at first, you might mistake that quiet for bitterness.

You might think, I’ve become heartless.

But maybe you haven't.

Maybe you're simply tired of carrying what was never yours.

There is a difference between giving up on people and giving up on convincing people.

That's the part I wish more of us understood.

You can love someone and stop chasing them.

You can care about someone and still say no.

You can forgive someone and decide they don't get the same access to you anymore.

You can understand why someone behaves the way they do without accepting their behavior.

You can wish someone well from a distance.

You can even miss someone and still know they aren't good for the version of you you're trying to protect.

That's not cruelty.

That's discernment.

And maybe that's what growing up really looks like.

Not becoming someone who doesn't care.

Becoming someone who finally understands that caring has limits.

Because what happens when you're always the understanding one?

You understand their bad mood.

Their silence.

Their inconsistency.

Their mistakes.

Their difficult childhood.

Their fear.

Their stress.

Their circumstances.

Their reasons.

And eventually, you understand them so well that you forget to ask whether they are understanding you.

You become fluent in everyone else's feelings and completely illiterate in your own.

You say, "I know they didn't mean it."

But did it still hurt?

You say, "They're going through a lot."

But what are you going through?

You say, "That's just how they are."

And maybe that's true.

But why does who they are require you to keep becoming someone you're not?

That's the question.

The uncomfortable one.

The one that makes you sit with yourself for a little longer than you'd like.

Because sometimes we're not actually being patient.

We're postponing a decision.

Sometimes we're not being kind.

We're afraid of being disliked.

Sometimes we're not giving someone another chance.

We're giving ourselves another reason not to leave.

And sometimes we call it loyalty because admitting we're afraid would be harder.

I've done enough emotional overtime.

Maybe you have too.

The unpaid kind.

The kind where you're constantly monitoring someone's mood, choosing your words carefully, wondering if today is the day they'll finally understand.

The kind where you keep shrinking your needs because having needs feels like asking for too much.

The kind where you become incredibly good at saying, "It's okay."

Until one day you realize you don't even know whether it is.

That's when the last fuck to give starts to disappear.

Not all at once.

Piece by piece.

Until one day you look around and realize you've stopped trying to make things work that only worked when you were doing all the work.

And strangely enough, there isn't always anger.

Sometimes there's grief.

Because letting go of your effort means accepting that effort wasn't enough.

That you couldn't love someone into changing.

Couldn't explain yourself into being respected.

Couldn't be good enough to make someone treat you well.

Couldn't keep giving without eventually becoming empty.

And that's a painful thing to accept.

But it's also freeing.

Because once you stop believing everything is your responsibility, you get some of your life back.

You get your mornings back.

Your attention.

Your peace.

Your ability to laugh without checking whether someone else is upset.

Your ability to make decisions without wondering how everyone else will react.

You get to exist without constantly managing the emotional temperature of the room.

And maybe that's what I mean when I say:

*Here lies my last fuck to give.*

I'm not saying I don't care anymore.

I care.

Probably more than I should sometimes.

But I am no longer interested in proving it through exhaustion.

I am no longer confusing access with love.

I am no longer treating my availability as evidence of my goodness.

I am no longer measuring my heart by how much disrespect it can survive.

That last one matters.

Because we praise people for being able to endure almost anything.

"She's so strong."

"She can handle it."

"She's always there."

"She never complains."

But what if strength isn't always staying?

What if strength is admitting,

This is hurting me, and I don’t want this anymore.

What if strength is letting someone be disappointed in you?

What if strength is allowing people to misunderstand you without chasing them down with a ten-page explanation?

What if strength is realizing that being a good person doesn't require you to be endlessly available?

Maybe you don't need to become harder.

Maybe you just need better boundaries around your softness.

Because softness without boundaries becomes self-abandonment.

And I don't want to abandon myself just to make everyone else comfortable anymore.

So yes.

Here lies my last fuck to give.

It has been spent on things that drained me.

People I kept trying to reach.

Situations I kept trying to fix.

Explanations I kept repeating.

Versions of myself I kept sacrificing just to keep the peace.

And honestly?

I'm not even angry about it anymore.

I'm grateful I finally noticed.

Because there is something beautiful about reaching the end of your emotional rope and realizing you don't have to tie yourself to anyone with it.

You can put it down.

You can breathe.

You can walk away.

You can stop proving.

You can stop chasing.

You can stop auditioning for a place in someone's life.

And you can finally turn that energy toward the person you've been neglecting while trying to be everything to everyone else.

Yourself.

Maybe that's where your next fuck should go.

Not to another argument.

Not to another explanation.

Not to another person who keeps making you question whether you're asking for too much.

Give it to your peace.

Give it to your future.

Give it to the parts of yourself that have been waiting patiently for you to come home.

And if someone doesn't understand?

Let them.

If someone thinks you've changed?

Maybe you have.

If someone says you don't care anymore?

Maybe you simply stopped caring in the way that was destroying you.

There is no shame in that.

Sometimes the most loving thing you can say to yourself is not I’ll try harder.

Sometimes it's:

I’ve tried enough.

And sometimes, that's where your life finally begins.

If this resonates,leave 50 claps. Comment on what you’d like to read more on. You’ll want to read what’s next. Stick around.

Keeninspires

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Welcome to Heartline Publications

Here lies my last Fuck to give was originally published in Heartline Publications on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.