u/Whoevenreallycares24

—I don't like thinking in a
victim mentality and yet
I do occasionally find myself
wondering what I did to deserve
the hurt I've felt in my life
this feeling, this utter solitude
was not what the little ashley
thought she would feel once
she grew up. The more I seem
to understand about people &
our movement in the world
I somehow feel like I lose
relationally. Where my compassion,
understanding, consideration
& grace extend outward over
others, I feel like I receive less
of those things

Maybe I’m really not meant for this planet

(But, who even really cares)

*I wrote this back in 2018 pretty interesting coming across older pieces of writing.*

Have you ever been at a war with yourself? Inside your own mind, no one knowing when or why or maybe not even knowing that you are at all. maybe they even just ignore the signs/cries entirely. Sometimes It’s as if you are drowning not the fast way everyone thinks but instead you’re stuck right in the crash zone of the ocean waves, slowly inhaling with each crash. Sharp pain all throughout your body with no specific region of origin and after each break before the next you fight yourself to get up, get away. But you can’t physically, just can’t. Then crash! Another wave breaks this time all you can think about it is, why can’t you just get up! Make it to the shore, soft sandy beaches are waiting just within your sight. Easy right? Just like everyone says “ just keep going” “ stop being so negative” “ you do it to yourself” But do I? Every second of every day I fight that ocean but every time I get close to the shore the drag catches to take me back out and then comes the guilt to sit on your chest, why I just I can’t get there, why can’t you make it and move on. There’s days where there’s No fight at all, some days it’s better, way better but those waves are always right there, always crashing but one day I will get to that shore instead of being caught in the waves and the powerful drag I’ll be able to sit there and watch the waves, and look back on where I once was in life and how far I’ve come.

I’ve been noticing myself lately.
Not through searching for some hidden version of myself underneath it all.
Just noticing.

The way my mind reaches for patterns before I know I’m even looking for them.
The way I pull things apart to understand what holds them together.
How one question rarely stays one question.
The way curiosity becomes a trail.
The way my attention moves toward whatever doesn’t quite make sense.

I’ve noticed that I don’t always need the answer.
That sometimes I mistake familiarity for truth.

My body has its own language.
My memory, its own geography.
My creativity, its own weather.

Some things I’ll understand instantly.
Some things take longer.
Some things I’ll hold intellectually before I know what to do with them.

I’ve noticed that I’m not always consistent in the way I once thought I needed to be.
I contradict myself.
I change my mind.
I ask old questions through different eyes.

Sometimes I discover I was wrong.
Sometimes I discover I was right for reasons I didn’t yet have the language for.

I’ve learned that understanding something doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve finished experiencing it.
That knowing the mechanism doesn’t make the effect disappear.
Naming something doesn’t resolve it.

And still, I’m noticing.
Learning.
Recognizing.

Some things I’ve inherited.
Some things I’ve adapted to.
Some things I’ve become.
And some things I’m still deciding.

I learned young
that terrible things
could happen
and the next morning
would still arrive.

Breakfast.
School.
Doors opening.
People talking.
Life continuing
as though nothing had happened.

Out of sight,
out of mind.

That was the lesson.

Except nothing
was ever really out of sight.

When I was five,
someone who was supposed to be safe
wasn’t.

I don’t remember everything.
Maybe that’s mercy.
Maybe that’s memory
doing what it had to do
to let a child keep going.

I remember enough.

But there were no charges.
Having to talk to officers
when you’re five,
without your mom,
was more than a child
should have been expected to do.

And there was no long road
of therapy afterward,
no one sitting beside me
helping me understand
what had happened.

There was just
the next day.

And then another.

And then home became
its own kind of danger.

A new person came
and the house changed again.

There was screaming.
Tension.
Conflict.
Aggression.

There were physical fights
between my stepfather and my brother,
my mother hysterical,
the whole house becoming
something I learned to listen to
before I learned to understand it.

I learned the language
of footsteps.

The temperature of a room.

The difference between
a normal silence
and the kind of silence
that meant something was coming.

And then there were
my little sisters.

So I took them.

I brought them into a bedroom.
Closed the door.
Tried to make somewhere
small enough
for them to feel safe.

I was a child too.

But sometimes
I was the closest thing
they had to one.

It was strange,
being a child
who needed protecting
and becoming a protector anyway.

Maybe that’s why
I learned so early
to take responsibility
for things that weren’t mine.

To notice.
To anticipate.
To absorb.

To keep everyone else
as safe as I could
while quietly wondering
who was supposed to do that
for me.

My mother could be cruel.

She put her hands on me.
She screamed at me.

And at 13 she told me something
I don’t think a child
should ever have to carry.

She loved me…..
because she was my mother,
but she didn’t like who I was.

I’ve carried that.

Because there are some sentences
that don’t need to be repeated
to stay alive.

I don’t need to know
what she meant by it.

I know what a child
can hear in it.

There is something about you
that makes you difficult to like.

I spent years
trying to figure out
what that something was.

I never really found
an answer.

And eventually,
I left.

Not gracefully.
Not healed.
Just gone.

I think I’ve done that
my whole life.

Kept walking.

Even when something inside me
was still standing
in the room I had just left.

I learned how to function
while hurting.

I learned how to make
terrible things ordinary.

I learned how to protect people
while needing protection myself.

I learned that silence
could mean safety,
but it could also mean
no one wanted to look.

I learned to be careful
when asking for help.

Because I was met with
only frustration.

So eventually,
you learn to struggle quietly.

You learn that not knowing
can be dangerous.

I learned to notice everything
because noticing
could keep me one step ahead.

And maybe the hardest lesson
was this:

Something doesn’t stop hurting
just because nobody talks about it.

A closed door
doesn’t erase what happened
behind it.

A quiet house
doesn’t mean
everyone inside is okay.

A person can say
they’re fine
and still be carrying
an entire childhood
inside their body.

I don’t remember everything.

I don’t think I need to.

I remember enough
to know that little girl
should have been protected.

She should have been believed.

She should have been allowed
to be a child.

She should never have had
to learn how to survive
before she learned
what safety felt like.

For a very long time,
I thought that was the whole story.

That surviving
was the same thing
as being okay.

But still I keep walking.

Maybe it wasn’t to be understood
that I had been seeking all along.
Perhaps being deeply known
was never the prerequisite.
Perhaps being met with curiosity
always was.

Maybe it wasn’t to be understood
that I had been seeking all along.
Perhaps being deeply known
was never the prerequisite.
Perhaps being met with curiosity
always was.

They speak in mirrors polished clean.
Where every fracture looks like light.

Carefully arranged reflections
to prove they can see themselves

They call it understanding.
The same way one may memorize
a new language, yet never reshape
their tongues to speak it.

So when they speak
words can be heard
yet find no true translation.

I learned the language of silence
But I grew rooted in places meant
for passing through.

I kept walking, even after
the road forgot me.

If everything is explained,
nothing is accountable.

This is where distortion
survives inside kindness.

So I refuse to collapse
between understanding and release.

They do not share a door.

People leave residues in us..
We don’t leave people behind. We layer them.

in the way we speak,
in the things we reach for without thinking,

in the phrases we repeat
in someone else’s cadence,

Not memories… imprints.

We all are walking mosaics crafted from the finger prints of others.

And most days we don’t even notice how much of us was first someone else.

Still Water
I learned early
how to make still water of myself
no ripples, no questions
just a surface you could look at
& think you understood

Underneath though—
storms with no language,
grief that never got a name,
anger folded so neatly
it started to look like obedience

I kept whole oceans quiet
just to be easier to hold.
you saw calm,
I was holding my breath

but oceans don't stay quiet
they remember every storm
even when the surface forgets
& one day— that water will rise,
not to drown you....
but to finally let you breathe

Nature has never felt like scenery to me. It feels like something I belong to.

When I walk through a forest or sit outside listening to birds, I don’t just notice individual plants or animals. I’m drawn to the relationships between everything. The way fungi nourish trees. The way insects pollinate flowers. The way weather reshapes landscapes, and how every living thing adapts in response. It’s an endless web of cause and effect that somehow remains in balance despite its complexity.

I find beauty in that complexity. There’s something profoundly humbling about realizing that every organism, no matter how small or overlooked, has a role to play. Nothing exists purely for itself. Everything contributes to something larger.

Because of that, the destruction of ecosystems doesn’t feel like reading another news story. It feels like watching pages being torn from a book that took millions of years to write. Every extinct species represents not only the loss of that organism, but the disappearance of countless interactions, adaptations, and possibilities that can never be recreated.

Nature is one of the few places where I feel completely present. It asks nothing of me except that I pay attention. The more closely I look, the more I realize there is no such thing as “ordinary.” Every bird call, every mushroom after the rain, every shifting cloud pattern is part of an intricate living system that continues whether anyone notices it or not.

I think that’s why I care so deeply. I don’t see nature as a collection of resources or beautiful places. I see it as a living community that humanity belongs to, not one that exists for us. When pieces of that community disappear, it feels less like change and more like grief.

I’ve wondered for a long time whether this way of experiencing the world is something other Virgos relate to because of our association with the Earth element, or if it’s simply part of my own personality. I’d love to hear your experiences, whether you relate or not.

Pulling a few tarot spreads. If you’ve got a question, I’m listening

I used to think
what I wanted was to be understood.
That love was someone
learning the language of my silences.

I wanted the movie version.
The rain-soaked recognition scene.
The hand reaching across the table
before I had to ask.
Because they heard my shuddered breath.

The kind of love that notices.
The flinch.
The pause.
The way a voice changes
when it’s carrying too much weight.

But the older I get,
the more the illusion sheds itself
like old paint on a barn door.

And underneath it all
is something smaller.
Humbler. Even more
Tragic in its simplicity.

I did not want fairy tale love
because I was naïve.

I wanted it because fairy tales contain
a kind of tenderness
real life keeps trying to convince people
is excessive.

I’ve learned that all along
I’ve just wanted someone
who would think of me
while moving through
their choices in life.

That’s all.

Not worship.
Not mind-reading.
Not endless poetry carved into the ribs of the universe.

I never asked for stained glass miracles
I only wanted to be asked
If I’d like shelter from the rain.

Just consideration.

The seemingly extinct art form
of remembering another person exists
even when it may be inconvenient.

And maybe that’s why it hurt so much.

Because I kept mistaking
the absence of abandonment
for the presence of love.

Kept calling survival devotion.

Kept standing in half-lit doorways
reciting all the ways things could be worse
the way some people pray.

While quietly becoming someone
who abandoned herself
before anyone else even had the chance to.

And I’m finally seeing that
love should never
feel like begging
to be remembered
inside someone else’s choices.

That the fairy tale love
dreamed about by little me
was never really fantasy at all.
The palace in my dreams was secretly
a house with the lights left on for me.
Just the desire to be held within another mind
while they move through life
like my existence holds weight.