Strings of Fate: The First Loop

CHAPTER 30

The tears fell too fast to stop this time.

“How am I supposed to see the light in people when I’m drowning in my own darkness?”

I tried to remember the way she used to say it, soft but firm: “Always see the light in people, even when it’s hard.”

But what if the light is just a flicker? What if I mistake a spark for a fire, and I burn trying to keep it alive?

My voice cracked. “Please, Mom. Help me see the way.”

But I knew she couldn’t. She is gone.

And all that’s left is this:
The silence of my room.
The reality of a world that doesn’t wait.
And the people I love who keep breaking and breaking and handing me the pieces.

But maybe that’s what we do when we’re scared.
We look up, hoping someone, something, bigger than us is still writing the script.
And we pray they haven’t stopped mid-sentence.

Because if someone up there is still holding the pen… maybe there's still a way to get through the chaos.

Maybe, just maybe, there's still a way to keep choosing love.

Even if it breaks us open.

I stayed still for a long time.

My room was quiet, the kind of quiet that made you hear things, like your heartbeat, your breath, the sound of your thoughts scraping against each other.

I wasn’t crying anymore, but I wasn’t okay either.

It was like... a stillness after a storm, where everything looks whole from the outside but the trees are split in the middle, their cores exposed to air for the first time. I didn’t know how to move. I just sat there with my knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them, forehead resting against bone.

I thought about James.
His trembling.
His voice breaking.
That childlike look in his eyes, the one that screamed, Please, choose me.

And I had. I always did. Always would, I think.

But in the space between his fear and my promise, something else bloomed quietly in the back of my mind, something I hadn’t wanted to admit for so long.

I am exhausted.

Not just tired. Not just sleep-deprived or burnt out.

Exhausted in my soul.

Because somewhere along the way, I began believing that other people’s pain was more important than my own. That if someone was crying, I should hold them, even if I was crumbling. That if someone needed me, I had no right to say “Not now.” Not when they were hurting more. Not when they had it worse.

I learned to translate my own pain into silence.
To bury my grief like seeds in soil too dry to grow anything.
And then I watered everyone else’s garden instead.

I didn’t notice that I was starving.

No one tells you that being strong for everyone else means disappearing quietly. You vanish in pieces, first your needs, then your wants, then your voice, until you become a shape made out of apologies and nods. A girl who says "I'm okay" like a reflex, even when she's drowning.

People call it love. Or kindness. Or being a “good person.”

But sometimes it’s just self-abandonment in disguise.

Sometimes it’s a cry for help that sounds like "I’m fine."

I thought of my mom again. Of that last memory. Her voice like wind against glass: “Always see the light in people, even when it’s hard.”