I know the last chapter was thick with metaphors—abysses, shadows, all that—but honestly, that’s the only way I know how to carry those memories. They weren’t just moments; they were allegories. I remember my childhood more vividly than most—but not in clear stories. I remember through feeling: the pain, the anger, the hollow sadness. The stories around those feelings? My imagination patched those together. Maybe that’s why I can reach further back than most—because I never stopped trying to connect the dots.

So yeah, metaphors. Stories. Allegories. Let’s dive back in.2016 was the darkest year of my life. I left the love I’d found, buried a fragile, newborn faith under the weight of doubt, packed a bag, and walked away.

They say there’s calm after the storm. And in the thick of it, I longed for that calm—a cinematic moment of closure beneath a perfect sky, a rainbow stretched out like a reward. But that moment doesn’t come on cue. First, you have to wade through the fog of what ifs, second-guessing every choice you made, trying to pinpoint the moment it all went sideways. You wonder: Could I go back, whisper a clue to my old self, plant a signpost before the cliff? But instead, you’re sedated by the haze—antidepressants and zepams keeping your head below the torment, muffling the pain but never quieting it.

Humans are absurdly adaptive—it’s one of our greatest gifts & a curses. Even excruciating pain, if it lingers long enough, becomes just another constant. You start evolving into someone who can, bizarrely, picture Sisyphus happy. And one day, under some ordinary blue sky, you realize: you’ve changed. Without noticing, you’ve stopped reliving the past. You’ve started running from it. Like a terrified kid lost in some run-down, haunted amusement park, chased by a clown born from your own subconscious.

You shift in ways you didn’t plan. Songs you once knew line by line now sound foreign. Your favorite artists, your literature, your whole palette of comfort—they fade. And quietly, piece by piece, a new identity takes form. You lock away the older version of yourself like a dangerous artifact—sealed, red-taped, shelved in a room inside your mind you try not to open. You ink over the scars. You rewrite the rhythm of your days. And suddenly, the you that survived the storm… isn’t you anymore.

You walk the corridors of your own memory and find a stranger behind the door. And for the first time in a long time, you’re ready—truly ready—to start again.