Reflections

 There are moments in life when the heart splits itself in two: 

One part reaches forward, aching for what once felt safe, the known familiar. It remembers the warmth, the laughter, the quiet certainly of what seemed forever. It longs for the road that led to comfort, to belonging, to the sense that you were exactly where you were meant to be. The other part pulls back, whispering caution, warning that the same road may lead only to old pain, to the fractures you thought you had mended, to the remainders of yourself in pieces. And so we stand, caught between the longing to return and the fear of repeating.

It isn't always about a person, sometimes it's about a dream, a path, a version of ourselves we thought we'd become. Sometimes it's about love, sometimes it's about the life we imagined and lost. Sometimes it's a whisper of who we were, calling from a past we can never quite step back into. The details change, but the feeling is the same: two voices inside, each insistent, each half-right, each carrying its own truth.

And sometimes what we cling to is not the forever itself, but the outline of it - a sketch, a rehearsal, a shadow. We mistake the comfort of the familiar for the promise of the eternal. But what if that was never the finished version of love or of life, only a draft? What if what we were really holding was just a broken prototype of the real thing - something that taught us what we long for, but was never meant to last in our hands?

The struggle isn't really in choosing one over the other. The real struggle is in learning to trust yourself enough that either choice won't undo you. To know that you are not defined by what you have lost, nor trapped by what you fear. To understand that the self that remains after endings and beginnings is still whole, still enough, even when it trembles in uncertainty. 

And yet, there is a subtle grace in the tension. For in the pause between moving forward and holding back, we learn to feel our own edges. We recognise the strength in hesitation, the wisdom in restraint, the courage in stepping gently, even when our heart is trembling. The tug-of-war itself becomes a teacher, shaping patience, discernment and self-compassion.

Because when you return to yourself, your worth, your ground, your quiet strength, the tug-of-war softens. The decision doesn't become easier, but you no longer feel like you'll break if you choose "wrong". You begin to see that even if the path closes, you'll find another. Even if the door reopens, you can walk through it differently this time. Even if you are alone, you are never empty, you carry the steadiness you thought was lost.

Perhaps the truth is this: the fear is never really about what lies ahead, but about whether we will be enough to meet it. And we are, we are enough, even when the heart splits and recombines, even when we falter and hesitate, even when the past calls softly to tempt us back. In every choice, in every step forward or backward, we are learning the same thing, that our hearts, though divided, are always capable of remembering how to be whole.