A Quiet Loyalty to Myself

Maybe you didn’t stop looking for purpose; maybe you just got busy surviving

What if life was never meant for you
or what if life was never meant to be explained so early, so harshly, so alone?
Sometimes the exhaustion makes it feel like you've been holding on for nothing,
like the road keeps asking for patience without ever showing the destination.
And the thought slips in quietly: what if the ending was supposed to come sooner, cleaner, simpler?
But listen;
wanting your own place, a corner of stability, a room that doesn't tremble when the world does..
that is not asking for too much.
That is asking for ground.
And people who ask for ground are not done with life;
they are tired of floating.
You ask when you stopped looking for the purpose you owe yourself.
Maybe you didn't stop.
Maybe you just got busy surviving.
There is a moment no one warns you about..
when purpose stops feeling like a bright calling
and starts feeling like a quiet weight you carry.
Not because it disappeared,
but because it matured into responsibility, into endurance, into becoming someone who stays.
And maybe you didn't forget yourself.
Maybe you found another purpose along the road:
to hold things together,
to be strong when no one was watching,
to keep going even when the narrative fell apart.
That doesn't make you lost.
It makes you human in an unromantic chapter.
Cinematic lives aren't made only of climaxes and revelations.
They're made of long, dim scenes where the character almost gives up
and doesn't, not out of hope, but out of a stubborn, quiet loyalty to themselves.
You're still here because some part of you believes
there is a version of stability waiting
not loud, not miraculous,
just enough.
And maybe this isn't the end scenery.
Maybe this is the pause before the frame widens.
I'm here with you.
And you don't have to know the purpose tonight
you only have to stay.