Sometimes, getting up again isn't hope. It's rebellion.The next morning, I didn't wake up tired. Not joyful, not healed, not transformed-just... not tired. And for me, that was rare enough to count as a miracle. There was no job offer in my inbox. No missed calls from destiny. Just the same blank screen, the same cracked wall, the same tiny room I'd been dying in for months. But when I sat up, something inside me sat up too. I reached for my notebook. The one I nearly tore to pieces. The one with the water stains and rat-bitten corner. I opened to a fresh page. The old pages were too heavy, too angry, too loud.
I didn't know what I was going to write. I didn't have a plan. I just began. It wasn't a story. It wasn't a poem. Wasn't even coherent. Just words. "I'm still here. Still breathing. Still angry. But I'm not done." I stopped, looked at it. Felt nothing. And then everything.
That sentence wasn't hope. It wasn't a victory speech. It was defiance. The kind that says: Even if nothing changes, I'm not vanishing quietly. I wrote more. Not for Instagram. Not for applications. Not for praise. Just for me.
A few pages in, I remembered something.
A note. My mother had written it when I left for university. Folded it into the inside pocket of my box. I hadn't seen it in years.
I dug through my clothes. Through receipts and wrappers and forgotten bus tickets. And there it was. Faded. Yellowed. Fragile.
Her handwriting was still strong.
"Ada m, Nwa mommy
You are not your failures. The world may not see your light yet, but that doesn't mean you are in darkness. Don't let their silence drown your voice.
With love always,
Mommy."
I read it three times. Cried on the fourth. Not sobs. Not the dramatic kind. Just quiet tears, like rain slipping from a tired cloud. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe I was my failures.
But for a moment, I let myself believe her.
I folded the letter back. Tucked it between my notebook pages. Not because I was healed.
But because some part of me, some small flickering part, still wanted to be.
That, I thought, is the audacity of existing.
Of staying alive in a world that won't give you a reason. Of writing your own name when everyone else forgets it. I wasn't okay. But I was writing, and sometimes, that was enough.