Cause I’m still the same—But only entirely different

Last year was a shipwreck I cannot quite map.

A sequence of shadows, a blur, and a gap.

I don’t recall how the seasons all turned,

Or the names of the bridges I watched as they burned.

I arrived at this moment, tattered and thin,

With a hole in my heart where the ‘usual’ had been.

I knew who I was when I first started out,

Before I was hollowed by shaking and doubt.

But the road to your ‘desired’ is paved with your skin,

And it’s lonely as hell when the peeling begins.

Feels like a failure, feels like a ghost,

A stranger to those who once loved you the most.

You look in the mirror and cry at the sight,

For the ‘you’ that you knew has been lost to the night.

But the wrongness you feel in your chest

Is the soul stretching out, putting limits to rest.

It’s the ache of the marrow, the pull of the new

The terrifying work of outgrowing ‘you’.

So stand in your wreckage, let the old life go cold,

For there’s something the silence has yet to unfold:

The person you were was a sketch, not the soul,

And the breaking was needed to make you feel whole.

You’re the same steady heartbeat you were at the start,

With the same quiet courage still guarding your heart.

But look at your hands, and look at your light,

You survived what was meant to destroy you tonight.

You’re the same as you were when the journey began,

But you’re built on a bigger, beautiful plan.

Not lost and not broken,

Just finally free.

The entirely different you’re meant to be.