1/3 full

the house is quiet tonight, with only the soft hum of life carrying on in the corners—familiar sounds that should bring comfort, but sometimes feel like they’re closing in. I’m sitting here, staring at the walls, trying to remind myself of everything I have, everything that should be enough. And yet, I find myself drifting, not forward but backward, chasing something that was never really there to begin with. The past has that peculiar glow, doesn’t it? A haze of could-have-beens, might-have-beens, a world where I imagined myself someone else, somewhere else.

But here, in the present, there’s my boy. He’s beautiful in the way only youth can be, all wild energy and wonder. He’s the best thing I’ve ever known, the best thing I’ll ever know. His innocent yet overly wise spirit, his laughter filling the rooms with something close to hope. And his father—a steady man, reliable as the ticking of a clock. He’s always there, a constant in a world that feels like it’s shifting beneath my feet. They should be enough. They are enough. Yet here I am, letting memories of a world that never existed cloud the one I live in.

I’ve spent months—maybe years—lost in the spaces between what I have and what I thought I wanted. I’ve let myself unravel over something so distant it barely feels real anymore. I’ve let myself be torn apart by longing for a version of life that was never mine to begin with. And all the while, the life I’ve built—this home, this family—has been right in front of me, waiting for me to notice, waiting for me to care enough to stay.

But it’s strange how we do that, isn’t it? We chase after things we don’t have, believing they hold some promise of happiness that’s just out of reach. We let the shadows of the past blind us to the light of what’s right in front of us. It’s a kind of madness, really, but one we all fall into sooner or later. And here I’ve been, letting the world implode over something that was never going to be, something that only existed in the corners of my mind.

My son is enough. His father is enough. They’re more than I deserve, really. And yet I’ve been living like I’m waiting for something else, something more. But there’s nothing else. There’s only this—the warmth of home, the quiet of night, the simple joy of being with the ones you love.

So maybe it’s time to stop the wandering, to stop letting the past weigh me down, to stop letting myself fall apart over a dream that never stood a chance. Maybe it’s time to stay still, to be present, to appreciate what I have before it slips through my fingers like everything else.

Because in the end, this is all we have, isn’t it? The moments, the people who make up our lives, the quiet evenings in a house that’s full of love if only we let ourselves feel it. I’ve been chasing a ghost, and I’m tired. It’s time to let go. Time to be here, fully, for once. Time to stop imagining a world that never was and start living in the one that’s mine.