THE QUIET BETWEEN MY HEARTBEATS.

Lately, I feel like a stranger in my own skin. The days pass, but something inside me lingers, unanswered, unsettled. I keep asking myself questions that echo in the quiet: Am I a good mother? A kind colleague? A loyal friend, a loving daughter, a present sister? Sometimes, I just don’t know.

There are nights when the silence feels heavier than my body. I lie in bed, tears slipping down the sides of my face, cooling on the pillow. The bed feels too big, too cold. The kind of loneliness I carry, no one truly understands. Not even my mother.

Sometimes I’m afraid to pray, afraid to ask God if this is what He meant for me, to walk this road alone, to live and maybe even die with no one beside me.

I find myself quietly hoping my siblings won’t call, won’t ask me to join them at family gatherings where love sits at every table. Husbands, fiancés, and girlfriends, smiles that mirror companionship. And there I am, the shadow at the edge, the extra chair no one really needs.

And there is him… oh, my mysterious man. Sometimes, I fear my heart still remembers him too well. I’m scared that if I let my guard down, I might fall in love again, just like the first time I met him that day. Once beaten twice shy.

Being a single mother, people don’t see how hard it is. The strength it demands, the pieces it takes. Two failed marriages behind me, and yet here I stand, crying, laughing, smiling, pretending, pushing forward even when it hurts.

I often wonder what it feels like to be truly loved. To be held, pampered, and chosen without hesitation. To be cared for not out of duty, but out of desire.

Ehh… I wonder.