Girl Kaleidoscope

Tag: Heartbreak

  • When the Light Goes Out

    Grief didn’t come gently.
    It didn’t knock.
    It surged, sharp and uninvited, through my chest like a tide at midnight,
    leaving behind a silence I couldn’t unhear.

    My ribs barely held it.
    My lungs forgot how to draw breath.
    There was no space left for light.

    When I left Papua New Guinea, there was salt on my lips —
    not sea salt, but tears that poured out of the hardest goodbye.
    My soulmate stood on that tarmac, unmoving,
    and something sacred split in me
    as the plane peeled away from the green earth.

    I didn’t just leave a place.
    I left him. With my heart.
    The only him.
    The one my prayers had quietly wrapped themselves around.
    The one my future had dared to imagine in full colour.

    And just like that, the palette of life dimmed.

    Orange turned jagged, like betrayal.
    Blue became an ache, a hollow I couldn’t fill.
    Even white — once my breath of peace —
    felt like chalk in my mouth.

    That’s the trouble with feeling deeply:
    when the world breaks, it breaks your senses, too.

    No one saw.

    I smiled at the airport staff.
    Hugged family.
    Sent replies, politely hollow.
    But inside, I was curled small and silent,
    my soul heaving like a bellows with no flame.

    I couldn’t breathe.
    I couldn’t pray.
    I couldn’t remember what hope felt like.

    It was when I saw him from a distance that the ache turned into something else —
    something heavier.

    There he was, living — helping, pouring, giving.
    Still shining. Still good.
    And there I was, undone.
    A well with no bottom.
    A song without sound.

    He moved through the world like morning light,
    graceful and bright,
    while I became the shadow trailing behind —
    unnoticed, unneeded.

    And the thing no one ever tells you about grief
    is that it doesn’t just steal joy.
    It warps time.
    It lingers in slow motion,
    dragging your feet through days that used to dance.

    I kept reaching into the silence —
    messages, prayers, memory —
    hoping he’d feel something echo back.
    Hoping he’d turn around.

    But the silence stayed.
    And I realized:
    he wasn’t looking for me.
    He wasn’t looking back.

    He was mending others,
    healing what was broken in them.

    And I?

    I was a quiet ache in a crowded room.
    A hollow girl who once held his attention
    and now couldn’t even hold her own reflection without wincing.

    I waited for a sign that I was still seen,
    still worthy of return.
    But all I received
    was the quiet cruelty of being overlooked.

    Not broken enough to matter.
    Not chosen.

    That shame… it’s a whisper that stays.
    It crept behind me like a second skin, murmuring:
    You were not enough. Not for him. Not for anyone.

    And so I fell.
    And kept falling.

    Into a grief that didn’t look dramatic —
    it looked like laundry undone
    and bruises no one asked about.

    It looked like full inboxes
    and empty hearts.
    It looked like functioning.
    Like being fine.

    But I wasn’t fine.

    Some nights I curled into the smallest part of myself
    and tried to remember the curve of his smile —
    the one I’d carried across oceans.

    But even that began to fade.

    The memory of light
    slipping through my fingers,
    like dusk folding into night.

    At my lowest, I sat on the floor,
    back pressed to the wall,
    and wondered what it might feel like to disappear.

    Not dramatically.
    Just… quietly.
    Like a shadow in the wrong light.
    Like breath slipping from a tired body.

    But even that thought —
    it wasn’t death I longed for.
    It was rest.

    It was for someone, anyone, to notice the heaviness I was carrying
    and whisper,
    you don’t have to do this alone.

    Because I couldn’t carry it anymore.
    Not alone.

    I’m not writing from the other side.

    I’m still here.
    Still breathing.

    Some days the light breaks through
    and touches my skin like grace.

    And some days — like today —
    the world feels like glass,
    sharp and fragile,
    and I wonder if anyone hears
    the quiet cry of someone still in love with a ghost.

    But I write anyway.
    For you.

    You who feels invisible.
    You who wonders if your pain is too quiet, too messy, too much.
    You who once felt seen, and now feel hollow.

    You are not alone.

    This darkness is real,
    but it is not forever.

    Even now, I believe that the God who stays in the silence
    is still weaving hope into the shadows.

    One day, someone will see you.
    Truly see you —
    not just your brokenness,
    but your beauty.
    Your wholeness.

    So I breathe.
    I wait.
    I let the small shards of love pierce my palms,
    and I hold them like prayers.

    And for now — for this moment —
    that is enough.

  • Faith in the Fog

    I used to think faith looked like fire —
    bright, bold, unmistakable.
    I thought it would always burn hot in my chest, always feel like certainty, always sound like singing.

    But lately, faith feels more like fog.

    Not gone, just… harder to hold.

    I still believe — but now, belief looks quieter. It looks like choosing to stay
    even when I don’t feel anything. Even when the sky doesn’t answer back.

    I wake up some mornings and whisper,
    “Are You still here?”
    Not because I doubt He exists,
    but because I can’t feel Him
    like I used to.

    There was a time when I would hear Him
    in every song,
    see Him in every sunrise,
    sense Him in every silent moment.

    Now, the silence feels heavier.
    Now, prayer feels like writing letters
    with no return address.

    And honestly, sometimes I feel like I’ve been left on read —
    not just by heaven,
    but by the people I trusted most.

    Rejection came from the places I never expected.
    Friends who turned away
    when I was too much, too broken, too inconvenient.
    A soulmate who wouldn’t walk with me
    through the messy truth of what happened —
    the trauma, the abuse, the parts of my story that aren’t tidy enough for newsletters.

    I was left to carry it alone.
    Ashamed.
    Exposed.
    Unchosen.

    And yet —
    even in all that,
    God never turned His face from me.

    He didn’t flinch.
    He didn’t walk away.
    He never said, “This is too much.”

    That’s the thing about fog.
    You can’t always see who’s standing beside you.

    But that doesn’t mean you’re alone.

    Faith is not the absence of fog.
    It’s the decision to walk through it anyway.

    Not with boldness, always —
    sometimes just with breath.

    Sometimes faith is a single step.
    A whispered prayer.
    A choice to keep the light on,
    even when the room feels empty.

    God isn’t less present in the fog.
    He’s just… less obvious.

    Like breath on glass,
    like wind through branches —
    still there.
    Still moving.
    Still holding.

    There’s a verse I come back to, over and over:

    “For we live by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7)

    It’s easier to quote than to live.
    But maybe that’s the whole point.

    Maybe real faith is forged here —
    in the grey,
    in the waiting,
    in the long nights where nothing makes sense,
    but we show up anyway.

    I don’t have clarity today.
    But I do have a candle.
    I do have breath.
    I do have the ache that reminds me I’m still alive
    and somehow, still reaching for God
    even when I can’t feel Him reach back.

    And maybe that’s enough for now.

  • I Built a Heart Upon the Air

    I Built a Heart Upon the Air

    I built a heart upon the air,
    Each breath a thread, each whisper fair,
    A tapestry of hopes and dreams,
    A vision born from love’s soft beams.

    With fragile hands I wove each part,
    A fragile thing, a fragile heart,
    Through tears and laughter, joy and pain,
    I shaped it in the softest rain.

    I wove the threads from distant light,
    From hopes that soared, from winds so bright,
    I fashioned it of silken strands,
    A promise placed in trembling hands.

    Each note of hope, a golden strand,
    I wove it high upon the land,
    The breeze it swayed, the stars they sang,
    As joy and sorrow softly rang.

    But shadows rose to steal my dream,
    And whisper words that coldly gleam,
    That hearts of air must fall, must break,
    For nothing pure can ever wake.

    And though I hoped, I knew the sound—
    Of my heart crumbling to the ground.
    Could you see me? Could you know—
    The weight of love, the weight of woe?

    And still, I wait in quiet grief,
    To find some solace, some relief,
    Will you hear my quiet plea?
    Or am I lost upon the sea?

    The heart I built is all but dust,
    It crumbles now, it turns to rust.
    Will love remain or fade from sight?
    Will hearts of air still take to flight?

    I built a heart upon the air,
    Each breath a thread, each whisper fair,
    And though it’s gone, I still believe
    In hearts that soar, and hearts that grieve.

    For even when the threads are torn,
    We rise again, reborn, reborn.
    And though my heart may fall again,
    I’ll build it once—then once again

  • The Silence that Breaks Us

    Trauma does not always look like open wounds and trembling hands. Sometimes, it looks like silence. Like paralysis. Like the slow erosion of a future you can no longer picture, because each time you reached for certainty, the ground crumbled beneath you.

    It took me years to understand this. Years to realize that what I saw as rejection—what I felt as unbearable, heart-wrenching neglect—was something else entirely. He wasn’t ignoring me. He wasn’t being careless with my heart. He was afraid.

    At the time, I did not know the language of trauma. I did not know how it steals your voice, how it traps you in the present with no roadmap for what comes next. I did not know that some people, when faced with the unbearable weight of decision, simply freeze. I only knew what it felt like to pour out my soul in ink and receive nothing in return. To open my heart in trembling conversations, only to meet silence on the other side.

    Silence became the slow undoing of me. Not because I needed constant reassurance, but because I needed something—anything—to hold on to. A plan, a promise, a direction. But trauma makes the future feel like a distant and unreachable thing, and now I see how that weight crushed him, too.

    I wish I had understood then. I wish I had not seen his fear as something done to me, but rather as something he was drowning in. I wish I had not let my own pain turn to bitterness, had not lashed out in my agony, desperate for him to just say something, anything at all. But I was young, and I was hurting, and I did not yet know what I know now—that sometimes, the people we love are not holding back because they do not care, but because they do not know how to move forward.

    It reminds me of Shakespeare’s words: “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o’erfraught heart and bids it break.” And that was the tragedy, wasn’t it? Neither of us could find the right words. My grief was too loud, his was too silent, and in the space between, something precious unraveled.

    In the end, it was the silence that broke me. Because distance does not allow for the unspoken to be read in a glance, for a hand on the shoulder to bridge the void where words fail. And so, I sat on one side of the ocean, waiting for answers, while he sat on the other, frozen in place, unable to give them.

    I have learned so much since then. I have learned how trauma takes hostages. How it steals not only the past but the future, making even love feel like something too uncertain to reach for. And most of all, I have learned that I, too, have been guilty of adding to another’s pain when I did not understand its depths.

    I cannot rewrite the past. I cannot go back and tell my younger self to hold her anger, to see beyond her own wounds, to recognize the shape of his fear. But I can hold space for the knowing now. I can offer the grace I once did not. And perhaps, that is its own kind of redemption.