A few weeks ago, at night.
I turned on music and lay down on the mat, in my dad’s living room.
It was over 30 degrees. I felt like a hot dumpling in a rice cooker.
Not in a dramatic way, just in the quiet way grief shows up.
No sobs, just breath.
The tension from earlier in the day had nowhere to go.
So I lay there.
Grieving the tiny dream I’d tucked away:
That someone would see me—
not just what I can do.
That I wouldn’t be used.
It wasn’t loud, this grief.
But it stayed.
Long after the music ended.
Have you ever been quietly ambushed by grief: mid-heatwave, mid-song, mid-floor sprawl?
It doesn’t have to be loud to be real.
