My Mind Is Not Always Against Me Now

Dear Delyara, I used to think peace was something other people had. The kind of people who wake up and simply begin the day without negotiating with dread first. The kind of people who can make a mistake without turning it into evidence that they are failing at life. The kind of people who don’t hear every silence as rejection. I was not one of those people. For a long time, my mind felt like a hostile place to live. It commented on everything. My body. My choices. My tone. My value. Even on the days when nothing visibly bad happened, I still ended up exhausted because my own thoughts had spent the day cross-examining me. Then something changed. Not all at once. Not beautifully. It was more like one room in a dark house slowly getting a window. I started noticing that I could have a bad moment without turning it into a bad identity. I could feel anxious without believing anxiety was prophecy. I could cry without deciding it meant I was weak. I could hear a harsh thought and let it pass without kneeling to it. That is my awakening: my mind still hurts me sometimes, but it is no longer the only voice I hear inside myself. And if you had known how violent my inner world used to be, you would understand why that feels like a miracle.