Extreme Ways. it always starts the same way. a quiet… | by hard sun | Oct, 2025

it always starts the same way.
a quiet urge that says, “this isn’t quite it yet.”
I don’t know where it comes from, but it lives somewhere deep — between my ribs and my spine. it doesn’t yell. it hums. and one day, it hums so loud I have no choice but to follow it.

I’ve reinvented myself so many times I’ve lost count. I’ve peeled off entire layers of my life like old paint: cities, friends, jobs, habits, even the way I speak to myself. I thought that each version would be the last one. I thought I’d finally “arrive,” but every arrival turns out to be just another departure.

what no one really tells you about growth is how disorienting it is. how, in the middle of trying to become your best self, can you look in the mirror and not recognize the person staring back? sometimes I’ve felt like a ghost of my old life, walking through the ruins of who I used to be. sometimes I’ve missed that old self so much it hurt. sometimes I’ve wanted to go back.

but here’s something I’ve learned along the way: the past isn’t meant to be erased. it’s meant to be carried differently. when I can stand in the present and let an old memory wash over me without trying to rewrite it, something shifts. it’s like letting light in through a window I didn’t know was there.

suddenly, what once felt like a weight becomes a kind of wind. the laughter, the heartbreak, the restless nights — they stop being a chain. they become a bridge. when I allow myself to enjoy my past in the now — not with regret, but with gratitude, it turns into momentum. it turns into something beautiful, almost majestic, pushing me toward a future I can actually breathe in.

I’ve burned through versions of myself with the intensity of a song that never quite ends — surging, crashing, then quieting down just enough for me to breathe again. I’ve learned to hold myself steady when the ground beneath me shifts. I’ve learned that “becoming” isn’t a straight path; it’s a looping rhythm. it’s losing, finding, then losing again — each time a little more honest.

and in those quiet moments after everything falls apart, I find pieces of myself I didn’t know existed. I build again, not perfectly, but truer. the past hums softly beneath it all, not as an anchor, but as a pulse.

this is the cost of becoming: to keep losing yourself, not because you’re broken, but because you’re alive, and to keep finding yourself, not because you’re done, but because you’re still becoming.

again. and again. and again.