Stay strong, they say, like strengthis the rent you pay for existing,like your bones weren't alreadyload-bearing walls for everyone else's needs.Stay strong while the chemo scorches.Stay strong for the kids watching.Stay strong because who else will?As if you had a choice.As if strong was a place you could stay.
I'm writing you a permission slip:You are allowed to dissolve.To ugly cry in the Trader Joe's parking lot.To cancel plans because breathing is work today.To say "I'm not okay" without the reflex apology,without the "but I'll be fine" disclaimer.You're allowed to be water instead of stone—to take the shape of whatever's holding you,even if that's the bathroom floor at 3 AM.
Strong is a costume that never fits right—too tight in the throat,too loose in the places that shake.Take it off. Leave it in a heap.Discover what's underneath:not weakness, but honesty.Not falling apart, but finallyletting the parts reorganizewithout the scaffolding of should.
The ones who love you don't needyour performance of okay.They need your truth, messy and molecular.They need to see that dissolvingis how humans heal—not throughthe rigid maintenance of finebut through the liquid courageof admitting we're not.
Stay strong? No.Melt if you need to.Pool. Evaporate. Rain somewhere else.Trust your molecular structureto reconstitute when ready.This is not giving up—this is giving in to the process,the way rivers surrender to gravityand carve entire canyonswith their softness.
Some days strong looks like stone.Some days it looks like water.Some days it looks like vapor,barely there but still breathing.All of it counts.All of you counts.Even the dissolved parts.Especially those.
Permission granted.—Signed, Everyone who got strongby dissolving first