The Forward Fall

Rock bottom, rewritten — where denial dies and truth takes its first breath.

Confession

I told the mirror the ugliest truth I fucking knew.
That I was the problem I couldn’t fix.
That control was a costume,
and it never fit quite right.

I said the word powerless
and my throat damn near closed,
like I was swallowing rust and memory.
Every drink, every pill, every high—
a prayer I never meant to pray,
to a god I didn’t even fucking trust.

I thought strength meant swallowing the tremor.
I thought recovery was for people
who’d fucked up worse than me.
But the lie cracked when I said it out loud—
My life had become unmanageable.
And suddenly I was smaller
than the glass I used to lift,
emptier than the bottle that held me.

There’s a silence that follows surrender.
It doesn’t sound holy.
It sounds like defeat.
It feels like god damn dying,
until it doesn’t.

Battle Cry

Of course surrender sounds like a scream.
Sometimes the white flag looks like bloodied hands.
They said surrender was strength—
I said bullshit.
But here I am,
fists unclenched,
knees on the floor,
finding out power lives here too.

I used to wrestle my reflection,
dragging her back into the lie—we’ve got this.
But we didn’t.
The truth beat me bloody and breathless,
and in that ache I found rhythm—
fuck-it rhythm,
rage-to-heal rhythm.

So I don’t rise today.
Not yet.
Today I fight to stay down
long enough to listen.
Long enough to let humility
out-muscle pride.
Long enough to let my wreckage
teach me rhythm.

Because this time
I’m not begging the bottle to save me—
I’m daring the silence to keep me alive.

Rebirth

And in that silence,
something soft finally breathed.
No lightning strike,
no angelic choir humming under my ribs.
Just breath—
shaky, stubborn, real-as-hell breath.

I stopped fighting the silence
and it started teaching me things.
How to sit without searching.
How to ache without anesthetic.
How to see myself
without flinching.

Powerless didn’t mean weak.
It meant open.
It meant I wasn’t the cage anymore—
just the bird learning to rest.

I used to chase control
like it was goddamn currency.
Now I trade it
for peace that costs me nothing
but my old self.

I don’t call it grace—
not yet.
But something in me unclenched,
and the air rushed in.

This isn’t a comeback.
It’s soul-grind work — the kind that breaks and builds me in the same breath.
It’s the grit beneath my nails.
It’s every shaky breath I choose instead of a shot.
It’s life — moving — and me — moving with it.