I’m going home, but not the way someone returns from a holiday.Not with lightness in my body, not with the feeling that the world has softened a little.

But with something heavy inside, as if instead of souvenirs I’m carrying a weight that doesn’t even have a name.

I don’t want to go into details.

Sometimes words make things too real.

I’ll say just one thing this island really does change you.

Not in the way people write in beautiful captions.

It doesn’t make you better it makes you honest.

It strips everything away, like wind tearing a roof off, and leaves you standing in front of yourself without excuses.

Tomorrow I have a doctor’s appointment.

I might have a broken rib.

And no, not from surfing or falling off a bike.

But from the hands of someone I thought I could trust. Hands that tightened around my neck. And tried to strangle me, in the most literal sense of the word.

It’s strange how quickly a person can stop being who you thought they were.

Like someone switches off the light and you realize you were just not seeing in the dark.

I lost my bank card with all my money.

So I’m coming back not only with pain in my ribs, but with debt that will remind me of all of this for a long time.

Sometimes life doesn’t just test you.

Sometimes it looks you straight in the eye and asks:

“So, do you still think you’re in control of anything?”

And in that moment, you realize you’re not.

Standing in the boarding line, I get a message from my father.

My grandmother had a stroke.

And something inside me finally breaks.

Without loudly. Without dramatically.

Just a quiet crack, somewhere deep inside.

I cry the whole way.

Not because I want to but because there is no other way.

And again, the same question, like a looped record:

why?

Why is this happening to me?

Again and again.

Is there even meaning in this, or do we just invent “lessons” so we don’t go insane from the chaos?

I don’t want to write about this.

I don’t want anything at all.

Even though I had so many beautiful moments I wanted to share.

Warm, alive, real.

But now they feel like they don’t belong to me anymore.Like they belonged to some other version of me that stayed on that island.

Everything is mixed up now. As if someone shuffled the pages of my life and said:

figure it out yourself.

I was often told that I complain too much.

But no one ever remembered how I rejoice.

People love simple versions of others.

Convenient ones.Without too much depth, without complicated feelings.

They tried to convince me that I’m ungrateful.

Weak. That my sensitivity is something that should be hidden.
But here’s what’s strange.

Why is the ability to feel so deeply considered weakness, while the inability to feel is called strength?

Sometimes, when I feel especially low, their voices come back.

They break into my mind like old recordings you can’t erase. And for a second, I believe them.

But the truth is, I’m just living the only way I know how.
I talk about my emotions.

I cry.

I get angry at the world.

I feel sorry for myself.

And then I still get up and keep going.Not because I’m strong.But because I don’t have another option.

And then another question appears:

why should I be ashamed of that?

Who am I trying to prove this to?

And why?

Maybe I’m just too overwhelmed right now to see things clearly. Because my heart isn’t cold.

It burns.

From pain.

From grief.

From injustice.

From fear.
And now from shame for feeling at all.

How do you trust people again?

Why does no one need my paintings?

Why does my world feel like it echoes into emptiness?
How much longer until something finally works?

And the scariest question of all

what will happen to my grandma?
What is a world without her? What is it like to never hear her voice again? To never visit her. To never eat her pancakes again. There are things we believe are permanent until they begin to disappear.

And here I am.

Writing this. And realizing that fewer and fewer people will read this to the end.

Only the most patient remain.

Or the ones who recognize themselves in it.

And maybe that’s the strange truth:

when everything falls apart, not everyone stays only those who truly see.

And I don’t know what to do next….