When I Changed My Mind About Strength

You used to think strength meant  
not flinching when the world cracked open,  
meant holding your breath through storms  
as if oxygen was optional when pride was present,  
as if silence could be armor,  
and tears were trespassers in rooms  
built for composure.  

I used to believe it too—  
that survival demanded stillness,  
that the unbending were the blessed,  
that showing pain was surrender.  

But then,  
you discover how brittle marble can be  
when dropped from the height of its own perfection.  
How iron rusts faster  
when it refuses to move.  

Now, look at us—  
standing at the threshold of a truth  
we once feared to name—  
that strength is softer than steel,  
that courage is not in clenched fists  
but in open palms,  
reaching out even when trust feels like a wound  
still wet with memory.  

You whisper,  
“I used to think I had to heal alone.”  
And I nod,  
because I used to think the same.  

***

There was a time I thought love  
was something you earned—  
through performance, through sacrifice,  
through keeping quiet about the chaos inside.  
You’d swallow every feeling  
until your stomach became a library  
of unspoken things.  
And you thought that was noble—  
calling it self-control instead of self-erasure.  

I changed my mind  
the day I realized quiet pain doesn’t turn  
into poetry by itself—  
it turns into illness.  
And the world doesn’t remember  
those who never spoke;  
it remembers those who trembled  
and spoke anyway.  

You remember that day—  
you stood by a window at dusk,  
the light thinning,  
your reflection almost invisible,  
as if even the glass didn’t want to hold you.  
You said, “I am tired of pretending I’m fine.” 
And it was the most honest sentence  
to ever come from your lips.  

That was the day  
you finally met yourself  
without apology.  

***

I used to think forgiveness  
was a gift for others,  
a kind of charity the wounded gave  
to the ones who made them bleed.  
But then,  
you learn the slow truth—  
that forgiveness is oxygen.  
Not for them—  
for you.  

You learn that the wound  
stops echoing when you stop naming it  
as the only thing that happened to you.  
You stop dragging yesterday  
like a shadow sewn to your heel,  
and suddenly,  
you are lighter.  

You whisper,  
“I don’t know how to forgive,”  
and I say,  
“You already started,  
the moment you decided  
to stop carrying what’s not yours anymore.”  

***

There was another thing too—  
ambition.  

Oh, how we worshipped it.  
We called exhaustion a virtue.  
We applauded sleeplessness  
as if fatigue was a language of worth.  
We stitched our identities  
to tasks completed, deadlines met,  
dreams achieved before dawn.  

I used to think purpose  
meant being everything for everyone.  
That silence after success  
was the sound of satisfaction.  

But silence has its own confessions.  
Sometimes it hums of hollowness.  
Sometimes the trophy gleams  
only because it reflects  
the emptiness around it.  

You changed your mind quietly—  
not with defeat,  
but with the realization that rest  
was not rebellion.  
That balance was not mediocrity.  
That peace was not the enemy of progress.  

You started choosing mornings  
without alarms,  
walks without destinations,  
and conversations not meant to impress.  
You started returning to yourself  
like a long-forgotten promise.  

***

And what of belief?  
The sacred kind—  
the one you were raised to hold  
like an heirloom.  

You once thought faith was a cage  
that punished doubt.  
You feared questions  
because they sounded like betrayal.  
But then loss came,  
and nothing made sense.  

You prayed,  
and silence answered.  

At first, that silence  
felt like abandonment,  
but later you learned—  
some silences are vast, not empty.  
Some are invitations, not rejections.  
Sometimes God is in what’s unsaid,  
not what’s written.  

You began to see holiness  
in the unassuming—  
in a stranger’s kindness,  
in your grandmother’s laugh,  
in the way pain shapes compassion.  
You stopped looking for miracles,  
and started noticing them.  

Now you tell me,  
“Belief isn’t about certainty anymore.  
It’s about awe.”  
And I believe you.  

***

You changed your mind about endings too.  
Once, you thought closure  
was a door you had to find.  
Now, you know it’s something  
you must build—  
from fragments, from confessions,  
from half-forgiven memories.  

You stopped waiting for people  
to return what they took.  
You stopped treating absence  
as a debt to collect.  
Sometimes, you whisper names  
into the air  
just to honor the fact  
that once, they mattered,  
even if they don’t anymore.  

And that too, is strength.  

***

I changed my mind about grief.  
I used to think it was a phase—  
a short tunnel to somewhere brighter.  
Now I know  
grief is a language we learn to live with,  
a dialect of love  
spoken long after the person is gone.  
It softens, but it never leaves.  
It reshapes you quietly,  
teaching you how to hold both gratitude and ache  
in the same palm.  

You told me once,  
“I don’t want to stop missing them.”  
And I said, “You don’t have to.  
Missing is just remembering with love.”  

***

We both changed our minds  
about success, too.  

We used to think it was visible,  
audience-based,  
built in public with loud applause.  
But now you see it differently—  
success looks like sleeping deeply,  
like saying no without guilt,  
like loving what you see  
in the mirror when no one’s watching.  

You started measuring life  
not by milestones or metrics,  
but by moments of presence.  
And isn’t that  
the truest transformation of all—  
to shift from proving to simply being?  

***

There was a time  
you thought softness was weakness.  
Now, you know softness  
is revolutionary.  
It’s the courage to be kind  
in a world that rewards cruelty,  
to choose empathy  
when indifference feels safer.  
It’s the decision  
to stay open  
even after being broken.  

You say,  
“I am not who I used to be.”  
And I answer,  
“You were never meant to stay that way.”  

***

In the end,  
what we really changed our minds about  
was what it means to live—  
not as a performance,  
but as an unfolding.  
Not as a sequence of goals achieved,  
but as a tenderness expanding.  

We learned  
that contradictions don’t make us hypocrites;  
they make us human.  
We learned  
that truth can evolve without deceit.  
We learned  
that sometimes the most radical thing  
you can do  
is to change—  
fully, unapologetically,  
without waiting for permission.  

***

Now I carry my former beliefs  
like dried flowers—  
fragile, faded,  
but still beautiful in their time.  
They remind me  
where I once stood,  
and how far I’ve walked  
to reach this quieter truth.  

You sit beside me,  
eyes full of remembrance,  
and ask,  
“What if I change my mind again?”  

And I smile—  
because that’s the point.  
You will.  
We both will.  

And maybe that’s not confusion—  
maybe that’s evolution.  

Maybe it’s grace disguised as uncertainty.  
Maybe it’s life,  
asking us to soften—  
again, and again,  
until being human  
feels like being home.

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