Dear Reader, P1, read P2, P3 as well

Dear reader, I am sad because I thought about my life, and it made me want to cry. It didn’t strike me like lightning, there was no crash of thunder or moment of clarity. It was quieter than that and it came slowly, like dusk settling in after a long day. I was just sitting alone with my thoughts, doing nothing in particular, when this ache started to rise in my chest. I began remembering, things I hadn’t thought about in a long time. Not one single moment triggered it, just this steady stream of memories and realizations that I’d been trying not to notice. It’s hard to explain the kind of sadness that has no center, no obvious wound to point to. I think it’s the accumulation of everything I’ve carried but never said out loud. The words I didn’t speak when I should’ve. The ideas I had that I never built. The music I could’ve written if I hadn’t been too tired. The songs that got lost in the swirl of my brain because I was too anxious to let them out. I remember sitting at my desk so many nights trying to create and to breathe life into the chaos inside me. All but the weight of everything else. ADHD, anxiety, the noise in my own head, kept getting in the way. There are people I barely talk to now, and I’m not even sure when the distance happened. Friends I once laughed with feel like strangers, and I don’t know how I let that happen. I think I grew up too fast in some ways and too slow in others. My life has been this weird mix of wanting to take control, start businesses, build something meaningful, chase huge dreams, and also feeling so tired I can barely get through a single day. I’ve had these brilliant visions, like my hoodie line that’s supposed to help people like me feel safe and grounded, and I still want it more than anything. There is this gap between what I dream and what I live, and sometimes the space between those two things feels unbearable.