There is a strength in me that even I forget sometimes— a quiet, stubborn pulse beneath the rubble of long days and the shadows of old battles that left their fingerprints on the softest parts of who I am.

It does not roar. It does not boast. It waits— like a loyal sentinel in the dark corridors of my chest, certain that I will return to claim myself again.

For I have fallen more times than memory can hold, and still— I rise. Not because I am unbreakable but because breaking taught me the architecture of rebuilding.

There were nights when my own thoughts became the closing walls of a room with no door. Nights where even breathing felt like a negotiation, and the universe seemed deaf to every whispered prayer.

Yet some part of me, small as a trembling match flame, refused to go out. Call it hope. Call it defiance. Call it the last sacred truth that pain could not steal.

I have learned that courage is not loud— it is the slow inhale before trying again. It is the quiet decision to step back into the world even when the world has not softened its edges.

And I— I am done apologising for the storms I survived. Done shrinking myself to make others comfortable. Done pretending that strength must look perfect to be real.

My power is in the way I continue— in the way my feet move forward even when the path is jagged; in the way my heart stays open despite old wounds that still whisper; in the way my spirit rises not like a shout but like a sunrise— quiet, inevitable, and unmistakably alive.