I wore a shirt with two words embroidered on it: STAY ALIVE.
I’ve worn words before without thinking much about them. Most of the time, they’re just there—something printed or stitched onto a piece of clothing because I liked how it looked.
But somehow, these two words followed me around today. And they made me think about you.
I don’t know who you are while reading this. I don’t know what your life looks like right now, what you’ve been carrying, or how much of it you’ve kept to yourself.
But I wonder how often you’ve been there for everyone else.
How many times you’ve answered the call.
How many nights you’ve listened to someone talk about everything that was hurting them.
How often you’ve noticed the slightest change in someone’s voice and immediately asked if they were okay.
How many times you’ve made room for another person while quietly running out of room for yourself.
We become good at that, don’t we?
Being available.
Being dependable.
Being the person who can handle things.
Until one day, you realize everyone knows they can come to you, but you have no idea where you go when it’s you who needs someone.
Perhaps you tell yourself you’re fine.
You still get out of bed. You still go to work. You reply to messages. You laugh when something is funny. You make plans for next week.
Life continues to look like life.
And that can make it difficult to admit when something inside you hasn’t been okay for a while.
There are things we carry so quietly that even we forget they’re heavy.
A disappointment we never really talked about.
Someone we’re still waiting for.
A version of life we thought we would have by now.
A mistake we’ve forgiven everyone for except ourselves.
Or simply the exhaustion of waking up every day and having to keep being a person—when being a person already feels like a lot.
I think sometimes we wait until something becomes unbearable before we allow ourselves to call it painful.
As though being able to carry something means it isn’t heavy.
As though getting through the day means the day didn’t take anything from us.
As though nobody noticing means there was nothing to notice.
I’ve done that too.
I’ve had days when I could tell something was wrong with someone from the way they said hello, yet I couldn’t—or wouldn’t—recognize the same quietness in myself.
Maybe you know what that feels like.
You become so familiar with your own exhaustion that you stop calling it exhaustion.
You become so used to disappointment that you learn how to expect less.
You become so accustomed to carrying yourself through difficult things that asking for help starts to feel stranger than struggling alone.
And somewhere along the way, you begin waiting for someone else to notice.
For someone to ask the right question.
For someone to stay a little longer.
For someone to look at you closely enough and say, “You don’t seem like yourself.”
There is something painfully human about wanting that.
To be noticed without having to ask. To be understood without having to explain every detail. To have someone recognize the weight before you have to admit that you’re tired of carrying it.
But people won’t always know.
Sometimes they’re carrying things too.
Sometimes they’ll misunderstand.
Sometimes the person you thought would notice simply won’t.
And you will still be there.
With yourself.
I think that’s what those two words on my shirt made me think about. How much of living happens when nobody is watching.
The mornings when getting out of bed takes more effort than anyone knows.
The commute home when everything finally catches up with you.
The meal you eat alone.
The bathroom mirror you stare into a little longer than usual.
The thoughts that only become loud when the room becomes quiet.
Those moments count too.
Your life is happening there too.
Being there for yourself can be painfully ordinary.
Sometimes it means admitting, “That hurt me.”
Sometimes it means accepting that you miss someone without turning that feeling into a reason to return.
Sometimes it means resting before your body forces you to.
Sometimes it means forgiving yourself for something you would have forgiven another person for a long time ago.
And sometimes there is nothing to fix at all.
You simply sit with yourself and let the day be difficult.
There will be days when you won’t know what comes next.
I hope you don’t mistake that uncertainty for an ending. Because there is so much of your life that you cannot see from where you are standing.
People you haven’t met yet.
Places you don’t know you’ll love.
Conversations you don’t know will stay with you for years.
Songs you haven’t played to death.
Things you will write, make, ruin, rebuild, laugh about, and eventually remember differently.
There are ordinary days you won’t think much of while you’re living them, only to someday wish you could return to them one more time.
There are versions of you that haven’t happened yet.
And I think I want to be around long enough to meet mine.
I hope you want to meet yours too.
So whoever you are, wherever these words happen to find you, remember that you are also someone worth showing up for.
You have spent enough time learning how to be there for other people. Learn the sound of your own silence too. Notice when you’re tired. Notice when something hurts. Notice when you’re slowly disappearing from your own life.
And come back.
Again and again, if you have to.
You are the only person who will be there for every version of you—the ones you loved, the ones you’re embarrassed by, the ones you barely recognize anymore, and the ones you haven’t become yet.
Be there to meet them.
There is still so much of you that hasn’t happened.
Right here,
Someone Who Needed the Reminder Too