🌿 Faith, Freedom and The Road to Reinvention: A Reflection on 2025
Some years don’t simply pass. They confront you. They dismantle quiet illusions, expose old wounds you swore had healed, and demand a level of honesty you avoided out of necessity. 2025 became a year of reckoning. With faith. With love. With politics. And with myself.
I’ve always considered myself spiritual. But faith has rarely offered comfort. My relationship with God exists in a complicated space. Part longing, part unanswered questions. Tension shaped by loss. Even as a child, I wrestled with the idea of God. I think I was searching for something even back then: a presence capable of translating chaos into meaning. What should have felt sacred instead became strained. From an early age, death was never abstract. It was an uninvited companion. A familiar shadow. Family. Friends. Those who once anchored my world. Each loss redrew borders, whispering the same brutal truth: the impermanence of certainty, the fragile nature of love, and how easily those we hold dear vanish, leaving silence and the harsh, arithmetic tone of grief. Loss rearranges the soul, and doubt naturally follows. How do you reconcile the randomness of life when life often feels indifferent? How do you hold faith when all you hold are ghosts? These moments bring emotional departures. The search for meaning amid the ruins.
This inner restlessness didn’t exist in isolation. Connections became mirrors, reflecting not only who they were but also the depths of my own longing for understanding, honesty, and stability. When foundations within yourself feel unsettled, even the bonds you desire most can tremble. It was here, in the space between yearning and reality, I learned the hardest truths about love and the limits of what one heart can sustain.
Love, or what masquerades as it, proves a landscape of peril. It softens the heart then shatters it with equal force. The hardest lessons come from the people we care for most. I’ve learned, painfully, when love demands a choice between your heart and your head, faith alone is never enough. That conviction drove me to publish Close Yet Far. The response was as I expected: No words. No conversation. The silence was deafening. The meaning unmistakable: my words, my support of him, and my vulnerability were expendable in his eyes. I understand now: there was never room for authentic connection. No home. Only a man incapable of depth, trapped in the illusion of control. Haunted by insecurity. Masking avoidance. I saw through him more than he realized. What hurt most — or what he never admitted — was my seeing him so clearly unsettled him. There is a quiet danger in being fully understood, in having someone recognize the shadows you hide from yourself. Maybe it wasn’t my heart that tethered me to him so stubbornly, but the truth I carried silently: I glimpsed more than comfort allowed, and perhaps that scared him most of all. The loudest truth was revealed in the curated glow of performative devotion. And yet, some do not seek the eyes of the world. They anchor quietly, offering constancy. A gravity holding what spectacle cannot. A stillness enduring when polished poses crumble and only presence remains. A quiet devotion not measured in borrowed light. Despite the disappointment and clarity I’ve gained, my heart remains tethered to him in its own defiant way. Love is not a switch. It doesn’t turn off when you decide it’s inconvenient. Sometimes the bravest act is stepping away. Where was he when I needed him? When you accept you cannot build a home inside someone who hasn’t built one within themselves, every cut bleeds deeper. When relationships are performative, feelings are fleeting, and presence is ephemeral. Choosing peace over a fractured presence becomes the only real act of love left.
And yet, I acknowledge I was not always fair. I loved him — whether he knew it or not. Feelings that still brush against me, even in unguarded moments. Perhaps, in some quiet corner, I always will. There’s a strength in him — for a time, it carried a kind of safety I hadn’t felt before. A force that made me question everything. His presence stirred parts of me I didn’t know were dormant — every layer, from thought to body — confronting what I wasn’t brave enough to face. Despite the hurt, my heart clings to what remains, aware of the pull still coursing through my veins. I see now how my insistence, even in previous online journals and emotional expressions, contributed to pushing him away. That affection was genuine, even if sometimes it stumbled into fear and frustration. Running isn’t an option. It’s survival. Sometimes, being honest with yourself at the expense of another is the only route to a truth others refuse to acknowledge — a truth that exists between hearts, even when visible to the world but goes unseen.
What others rarely perceive is the quiet alchemy stirring behind these agile eyes. Passion doesn’t announce itself; it ripples in spaces between breaths, flickering between thoughts, pulsating beneath each measured calm. Heat, rising and falling in warm, quiet waves, tracing contours of consciousness, a current flowing through every fiber: intimate, personal, alive. A furnace of thought and longing no gaze can fully touch, humming beneath my skin. Flames coursing through my body and sharpening perception. Yet in love, that same fire transforms, folding inward. Deepening — a warm, gentle flame when passion is truly alive. The lens through which I experience the world, guiding every thought, every choice, every step I take.
This year was taxing on me health-wise. Severe migraines. Sleepless nights. Fatigue that felt like drowning. Depression hollowing out entire weeks. There were nights when disappearing felt easier than enduring, and days when the future looked more like a burden than a horizon. My grades slipped. Motivation evaporated. What made it worse was the unforgiving nature of school. Education for me isn’t just essays and midterms — it’s OPs, “oral practical” exams that demand precision, memory, and composure on command. I wasn’t just studying; I was required to perform. Reciting landmarks of the skeletal system. Listing origins, insertions, and actions of muscles as if my mind weren’t already fogged with exhaustion. In Clinical Assessment, OPs became mock conversations: postural analyses demonstrated step by step, positioning explained, mechanics broken down, results articulated clearly and confidently. These weren’t tasks you could fake or muscle through with last-minute studying. They required clarity, steadiness, presence. And yet there I was, trying to recall detailed anatomy through a haze of fatigue and depression, hoping my voice wouldn’t shake or my thoughts wouldn’t scatter. The expectations felt impossible when my body and mind were already stretched past their limits. I found myself questioning whether college was still the right path — not from a lack of ambition, but because the weight had become too heavy to carry. Assignments that once felt manageable became distant mountains. The future felt unreachable. I wondered if stepping away would be a surrender or a form of mercy — a chance to breathe without those expectations crushing what strength I had left. It wasn’t a desire to quit, but a silent plea for space and rest rather than the relentless demands of progress. When the body collapses, the mind begins to fray. Despite everything — I’m still here. Still choosing tomorrow. Even when it doesn’t choose me back. Even when each day feels like a war within itself.
By mid-October, my growing disdain for the performative nature of social media — the endless algorithms, the clamor for attention — finally drove me from Instagram. Leaving wasn’t impulsive. I had already abandoned Bluesky and Twitter in ‘24. A protective distance carved out of necessity. And yet, in absence, there is presence. My departure was deliberate: I craved silence. Space. Privacy. A chance to measure my worth outside curated lives demanding validation and hollow affirmations.: “Listen to your heart. I’m here to listen”. The irony? No one really is. Convenient words from convenient people who offer nothing in return. Emotional erosion sets in when connection becomes transactional. Exiting Instagram was easy; Threads had already faded into the past. Deleting everything? Pure defiance. What I realized, quietly, was my withdrawal from social media mirrored a growing disenchantment with the political spaces I once inhabited. Platforms intended for connection had become minefields of moral posturing, where conviction was measured in volume and not substance. The decline of reasoned discourse, both online and in legacy media, reflected the same erosion I saw in personal spaces: posturing over truth. Just as I stepped away to preserve my emotional and spiritual health, I found myself questioning the principles I had once aligned with politically.
Leaving social media, one-sided attachments — all part of the same pilgrimage. A return to authenticity. I’ve never believed in seeking validation. Only a desire to be seen. To matter. To exist without asking permission. I gave up seeking belonging in spaces that demanded conformity in exchange for acceptance. I began to see the erosion of authenticity wasn’t simply confined. The same patterns of avoidance and hollow gestures infiltrated spaces I occupied online. Recognizing that both digital and ideological arenas demanded compromises, I stepped back from each to preserve my integrity. The personal and cultural were intertwined; stepping back from one became inseparable from stepping back from the other.
Amid the upheaval, ’25 offered glimpses of something quieter — steadier than digital chaos and phony affirmations. The year brought political redirection. My growing dissatisfaction with the Left in the U.S., and its shifting goalposts toward extremes, pushed me from spaces I once felt aligned with. The cognitive dissonance of a party that once championed reason descended into ideological rigidity, forcing many to reconsider where we stand. Some of us had no choice. My views, having evolved, now place me at odds with margins of the Left. In stepping away, I reclaimed clarity — the ability to think, feel, and act without restraint. In a way, I didn’t abandon the Left. The Left abandoned its principles, and many who once believed in them. Just as I seek honesty in relationships, I seek it in the spaces I inhabit politically. Refusing to settle or participate in performative gestures or fleeting convictions, I recognized the parallels between social media and the broader culture. Platforms became echo chambers masquerading as authenticity. Legacy media — MSNBC, NBC, CBS, CNN, ABC — largely ceded space to corporately compromised elites, leaving audiences to navigate a landscape where the loudest voices often stand for nothing. Across North America, cities drown in apathy — including my own. Addiction framed as virtue, crime explained away with platitudes, homelessness ignored and real problems dismissed as “inconvenient narratives.” The abdication of responsibility disguised as progress, leaving many searching for alternatives, or anyone willing to act. For those still committed to responsibility, accountability, and truth, dissent now carries real risk. To disagree with the Left is often labeled “fascist,” “bigot,” “far-right,” or worse. Real fascism isn’t disagreement — it’s the silencing of it, the justification of violence, the dismantling of free speech, and the enforcement of conformity under the guise of moral superiority. From the attempted assassination of Donald Trump to the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, the cost of dissent has become dangerously clear. We are living through a moment where freedom itself feels fragile. And yet, amid the noise, something sacred remains: the quiet space where reflection begins. Silence after heartbreak. The pause between conviction and doubt. In stepping away — from social media, from performative relationships, from spaces that demanded conformity — I reclaimed a small but vital autonomy. What began as personal preservation became an act of clarity — a reclamation of thought, feeling, and presence.
I’ve always considered myself spiritual. But faith has rarely offered comfort. My relationship with God exists in a complicated space. Part longing, part unanswered questions. Tension shaped by loss. Even as a child, I wrestled with the idea of God. I think I was searching for something even back then: a presence capable of translating chaos into meaning. What should have felt sacred instead became strained. From an early age, death was never abstract. It was an uninvited companion. A familiar shadow. Family. Friends. Those who once anchored my world. Each loss redrew borders, whispering the same brutal truth: the impermanence of certainty, the fragile nature of love, and how easily those we hold dear vanish, leaving silence and the harsh, arithmetic tone of grief. Loss rearranges the soul, and doubt naturally follows. How do you reconcile the randomness of life when life often feels indifferent? How do you hold faith when all you hold are ghosts? These moments bring emotional departures. The search for meaning amid the ruins.
This inner restlessness didn’t exist in isolation. Connections became mirrors, reflecting not only who they were but also the depths of my own longing for understanding, honesty, and stability. When foundations within yourself feel unsettled, even the bonds you desire most can tremble. It was here, in the space between yearning and reality, I learned the hardest truths about love and the limits of what one heart can sustain.
Love, or what masquerades as it, proves a landscape of peril. It softens the heart then shatters it with equal force. The hardest lessons come from the people we care for most. I’ve learned, painfully, when love demands a choice between your heart and your head, faith alone is never enough. That conviction drove me to publish Close Yet Far. The response was as I expected: No words. No conversation. The silence was deafening. The meaning unmistakable: my words, my support of him, and my vulnerability were expendable in his eyes. I understand now: there was never room for authentic connection. No home. Only a man incapable of depth, trapped in the illusion of control. Haunted by insecurity. Masking avoidance. I saw through him more than he realized. What hurt most — or what he never admitted — was my seeing him so clearly unsettled him. There is a quiet danger in being fully understood, in having someone recognize the shadows you hide from yourself. Maybe it wasn’t my heart that tethered me to him so stubbornly, but the truth I carried silently: I glimpsed more than comfort allowed, and perhaps that scared him most of all. The loudest truth was revealed in the curated glow of performative devotion. And yet, some do not seek the eyes of the world. They anchor quietly, offering constancy. A gravity holding what spectacle cannot. A stillness enduring when polished poses crumble and only presence remains. A quiet devotion not measured in borrowed light. Despite the disappointment and clarity I’ve gained, my heart remains tethered to him in its own defiant way. Love is not a switch. It doesn’t turn off when you decide it’s inconvenient. Sometimes the bravest act is stepping away. Where was he when I needed him? When you accept you cannot build a home inside someone who hasn’t built one within themselves, every cut bleeds deeper. When relationships are performative, feelings are fleeting, and presence is ephemeral. Choosing peace over a fractured presence becomes the only real act of love left.
And yet, I acknowledge I was not always fair. I loved him — whether he knew it or not. Feelings that still brush against me, even in unguarded moments. Perhaps, in some quiet corner, I always will. There’s a strength in him — for a time, it carried a kind of safety I hadn’t felt before. A force that made me question everything. His presence stirred parts of me I didn’t know were dormant — every layer, from thought to body — confronting what I wasn’t brave enough to face. Despite the hurt, my heart clings to what remains, aware of the pull still coursing through my veins. I see now how my insistence, even in previous online journals and emotional expressions, contributed to pushing him away. That affection was genuine, even if sometimes it stumbled into fear and frustration. Running isn’t an option. It’s survival. Sometimes, being honest with yourself at the expense of another is the only route to a truth others refuse to acknowledge — a truth that exists between hearts, even when visible to the world but goes unseen.
What others rarely perceive is the quiet alchemy stirring behind these agile eyes. Passion doesn’t announce itself; it ripples in spaces between breaths, flickering between thoughts, pulsating beneath each measured calm. Heat, rising and falling in warm, quiet waves, tracing contours of consciousness, a current flowing through every fiber: intimate, personal, alive. A furnace of thought and longing no gaze can fully touch, humming beneath my skin. Flames coursing through my body and sharpening perception. Yet in love, that same fire transforms, folding inward. Deepening — a warm, gentle flame when passion is truly alive. The lens through which I experience the world, guiding every thought, every choice, every step I take.
This year was taxing on me health-wise. Severe migraines. Sleepless nights. Fatigue that felt like drowning. Depression hollowing out entire weeks. There were nights when disappearing felt easier than enduring, and days when the future looked more like a burden than a horizon. My grades slipped. Motivation evaporated. What made it worse was the unforgiving nature of school. Education for me isn’t just essays and midterms — it’s OPs, “oral practical” exams that demand precision, memory, and composure on command. I wasn’t just studying; I was required to perform. Reciting landmarks of the skeletal system. Listing origins, insertions, and actions of muscles as if my mind weren’t already fogged with exhaustion. In Clinical Assessment, OPs became mock conversations: postural analyses demonstrated step by step, positioning explained, mechanics broken down, results articulated clearly and confidently. These weren’t tasks you could fake or muscle through with last-minute studying. They required clarity, steadiness, presence. And yet there I was, trying to recall detailed anatomy through a haze of fatigue and depression, hoping my voice wouldn’t shake or my thoughts wouldn’t scatter. The expectations felt impossible when my body and mind were already stretched past their limits. I found myself questioning whether college was still the right path — not from a lack of ambition, but because the weight had become too heavy to carry. Assignments that once felt manageable became distant mountains. The future felt unreachable. I wondered if stepping away would be a surrender or a form of mercy — a chance to breathe without those expectations crushing what strength I had left. It wasn’t a desire to quit, but a silent plea for space and rest rather than the relentless demands of progress. When the body collapses, the mind begins to fray. Despite everything — I’m still here. Still choosing tomorrow. Even when it doesn’t choose me back. Even when each day feels like a war within itself.
By mid-October, my growing disdain for the performative nature of social media — the endless algorithms, the clamor for attention — finally drove me from Instagram. Leaving wasn’t impulsive. I had already abandoned Bluesky and Twitter in ‘24. A protective distance carved out of necessity. And yet, in absence, there is presence. My departure was deliberate: I craved silence. Space. Privacy. A chance to measure my worth outside curated lives demanding validation and hollow affirmations.: “Listen to your heart. I’m here to listen”. The irony? No one really is. Convenient words from convenient people who offer nothing in return. Emotional erosion sets in when connection becomes transactional. Exiting Instagram was easy; Threads had already faded into the past. Deleting everything? Pure defiance. What I realized, quietly, was my withdrawal from social media mirrored a growing disenchantment with the political spaces I once inhabited. Platforms intended for connection had become minefields of moral posturing, where conviction was measured in volume and not substance. The decline of reasoned discourse, both online and in legacy media, reflected the same erosion I saw in personal spaces: posturing over truth. Just as I stepped away to preserve my emotional and spiritual health, I found myself questioning the principles I had once aligned with politically.
Leaving social media, one-sided attachments — all part of the same pilgrimage. A return to authenticity. I’ve never believed in seeking validation. Only a desire to be seen. To matter. To exist without asking permission. I gave up seeking belonging in spaces that demanded conformity in exchange for acceptance. I began to see the erosion of authenticity wasn’t simply confined. The same patterns of avoidance and hollow gestures infiltrated spaces I occupied online. Recognizing that both digital and ideological arenas demanded compromises, I stepped back from each to preserve my integrity. The personal and cultural were intertwined; stepping back from one became inseparable from stepping back from the other.
Amid the upheaval, ’25 offered glimpses of something quieter — steadier than digital chaos and phony affirmations. The year brought political redirection. My growing dissatisfaction with the Left in the U.S., and its shifting goalposts toward extremes, pushed me from spaces I once felt aligned with. The cognitive dissonance of a party that once championed reason descended into ideological rigidity, forcing many to reconsider where we stand. Some of us had no choice. My views, having evolved, now place me at odds with margins of the Left. In stepping away, I reclaimed clarity — the ability to think, feel, and act without restraint. In a way, I didn’t abandon the Left. The Left abandoned its principles, and many who once believed in them. Just as I seek honesty in relationships, I seek it in the spaces I inhabit politically. Refusing to settle or participate in performative gestures or fleeting convictions, I recognized the parallels between social media and the broader culture. Platforms became echo chambers masquerading as authenticity. Legacy media — MSNBC, NBC, CBS, CNN, ABC — largely ceded space to corporately compromised elites, leaving audiences to navigate a landscape where the loudest voices often stand for nothing. Across North America, cities drown in apathy — including my own. Addiction framed as virtue, crime explained away with platitudes, homelessness ignored and real problems dismissed as “inconvenient narratives.” The abdication of responsibility disguised as progress, leaving many searching for alternatives, or anyone willing to act. For those still committed to responsibility, accountability, and truth, dissent now carries real risk. To disagree with the Left is often labeled “fascist,” “bigot,” “far-right,” or worse. Real fascism isn’t disagreement — it’s the silencing of it, the justification of violence, the dismantling of free speech, and the enforcement of conformity under the guise of moral superiority. From the attempted assassination of Donald Trump to the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, the cost of dissent has become dangerously clear. We are living through a moment where freedom itself feels fragile. And yet, amid the noise, something sacred remains: the quiet space where reflection begins. Silence after heartbreak. The pause between conviction and doubt. In stepping away — from social media, from performative relationships, from spaces that demanded conformity — I reclaimed a small but vital autonomy. What began as personal preservation became an act of clarity — a reclamation of thought, feeling, and presence.
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