Inner Peace

Dear Delyara, I did not wake up one day and suddenly become healed. It was smaller than that. Quieter. Less cinematic. It was the first morning I noticed I had gone three days without hating myself. It was the first time I let a bad thought pass without turning it into my whole identity. It was the first time I said, “I’m struggling,” and did not feel weak for saying it. For years, my mind felt like a room with no windows. I lived in survival mode for so long that peace felt suspicious. If a day was calm, I waited for something to go wrong. If someone was kind, I assumed I had fooled them. But slowly, with time and honesty and more tears than I thought one person could hold, something changed. I stopped believing every cruel thing my mind told me. That is my victory. Not perfection. Not a miracle. Just this: my mind is no longer my enemy every single day.