Seventeen Days Later: I’m Still Here
It has been seventeen days since I last wrote something here.
Seventeen days.
I know that probably doesn’t sound like a long time to most people. But when you’ve spent five years away from something you love, even seventeen days can make that old voice in your head start whispering.
See? You’re doing it again.
You’re disappearing.
You said you were coming back, but maybe you really aren’t.
And maybe that’s exactly why I needed to sit down and write tonight.
Because I’m still here.
A Pause Doesn’t Mean I’ve Given Up
I didn’t stop writing because I suddenly decided I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t disappear because I had nothing left to say. Sometimes life simply gets loud. Sometimes my mind gets loud. Sometimes getting through the day takes more energy than I have to give, and the things I want to do get pushed further and further down the list.
Writing is one of those things.
But I’m learning something this time around.
Coming back doesn’t mean I have to be perfect at staying.
I don’t have to post every day, I don’t even have to post every week. I don’t have to turn this blog into some perfectly organized little corner of the internet where I always have something profound to say.
Maybe sometimes I’ll write twice in one week.
Maybe sometimes seventeen days will pass.
Maybe sometimes longer.
That doesn’t mean I’ve failed.
For so long, I think I believed that if I couldn’t do something consistently, there was no point in doing it at all. If I couldn’t keep up, I might as well quit.
And quitting is something I’ve gotten very good at.
I’ve quit things because I was overwhelmed.
I’ve walked away because I didn’t know what to say.
I’ve convinced myself that nobody really wanted to hear what was going on inside my head anyway.
And eventually, those little decisions to step away turned into five years.
I’m not doing that this time.
I’m not going to measure my return by how often I publish.
I’m going to measure it by whether I keep coming back.
So here I am.
Seventeen days later.
Still writing.
Still figuring things out.
Still having good days and bad ones.
Still trying to understand my own mind.
Still learning that progress doesn’t always look like moving forward.
Sometimes progress looks like stopping for a while and then deciding to pick the pen back up.
Sometimes it looks like opening a blank page when every part of you is telling you not to bother.
Sometimes it looks like simply saying:
I’m still here.
And today, that’s enough.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll have something bigger to say.
Maybe I’ll write about depression. Maybe I’ll write about the strange things my mind does. Maybe I’ll write about something completely unrelated.
Maybe I’ll have another seventeen-day gap.
But I’m trying not to be afraid of the gaps anymore.
Because a pause isn’t the same thing as disappearing.
And I’m not disappearing.
I’m still here.