My mind paints futures in gray. My body says sink. My mind says jump. My body refuses what I need it to do. My mind goes where I don't ask it to. I feel betrayed by the only things that are supposed to be mine. I keep asking if this is all there ever is. If anything gets easier. If I will ever wake up and not feel like fighting before my feet touch the floor.

Some days I am a fortress. I stack my spine like bricks. I tell the weight I am stronger than it. I lift and I push. And the weight shifts just enough to let me breathe, to fool me into thinking that is victory.

I am trying to get stronger. So it hurts less. So I can carry more. But I don't want to carry more. I don’t want to be strong. I don't want to have to be strong. There are days I am so tired of being strong. Days I don’t want to be the mountain that withstands the storm. I want to be the rain. I want to fall. I want to roll down the flower petals and windowpanes. I want to be held by something other than my own clenched fists. I want to exist without the performance of enduring.

And yet there is a small stubborn thing in me, ridiculous even, like a weed cracking through concrete. It barely has a voice. But when everything else goes quiet, I hear it say Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.

It is not a sunrise with violins. It is the decision to stay one more hour to breathe, one more no to the voice that tells me to leave.

I do not know if it gets easier. But I am still alive. And still holding on.

Mizuyōkaii, 2026

Dimensions: 5376 x 7680