I didn’t know recovery came with boxes and tears—
Cardboard reminders of every version I used to be.
You think healing’s gonna look like sunlight and sage,
But it’s really bubble wrap and breakdowns,
Late nights labeling memories you swore you’d already left behind.
I taped up pieces of myself,
marked fragile in Sharpie,
and prayed the movers wouldn’t drop my progress again.
Funny how you can move into peace
and still feel haunted by the echoes of your own past voice.
Recovery isn’t soft. It’s loud.
It’s the sound of tape ripping at 2 a.m.
when your mind says, “Maybe I was the problem.”
It’s deleting the photos,
then crying because you did.
It’s letting go, then checking the mirror
to see if the new version of you still looks like you.
I didn’t know healing meant saying goodbye to things
that never even apologized.
I didn’t know strength could ache this bad.
But here I am—
standing in the middle of my mess,
finally unboxing peace like it’s a gift I forgot I ordered.
See, recovery doesn’t show up dressed in white robes.
It comes in sweatpants, holding coffee,
telling you to get up anyway.
It whispers, “You can cry and keep going.”
And that’s the truth most people skip over—
you don’t always rise beautifully,
sometimes you crawl forward, dragging the parts
you’re not ready to unpack yet.
But you do it.
Every tear, every taped-up memory, every deep breath.
You start to see the beauty in the mess.
You start to find the rhythm in the real.
And one day,
the boxes stop feeling heavy.
They just become part of your story—
proof you survived the move.
