When the universe speaks to me, I struggle with its foreign tongue.

I have batted my eyes at the stars and flirted with the sun, searching for answers in places that could never answer me back.

For a long time, my ears were deaf to everything I didn’t want to hear.

And yet somehow, I heard too much.

Every disappointment.

Every mistake.

Every reason to believe I wasn’t going to make it.

I had become fluent in fear.

Success felt like something meant for other people. Happiness was something I could imagine but couldn’t quite reach. Even when something good appeared on the horizon, part of me waited for darkness to roll back in and swallow it.

I told myself I wasn’t scared.

Nothing was too deep.

Nothing could break me.

But sometimes the people who insist they aren’t afraid are the ones fighting hardest to keep their heads above water.

I had spent so much of my life fighting the current that I had forgotten there was another option.

I could stop fighting.

Not surrender my life.

Surrender the fight against it.

There is a difference.

Maybe I didn’t need to understand everything that had happened to me. Maybe I didn’t need an explanation for every person I’d lost, every mistake I’d made, every road I’d taken, or every version of myself I’d had to leave behind.

Maybe the universe wasn’t asking me to understand.

Maybe it was asking me to listen.

So I started listening.

And beneath all the noise—the fear, the shame, the anger, the chaos—there was one thought louder than everything else:

I don’t want to die.

I want another chance.

There was something almost shocking about admitting that.

After everything, I still wanted to be here.

I wanted mornings I hadn’t seen yet.

People I hadn’t met.

Places I hadn’t gone.

Love I hadn’t experienced.

I wanted to find out who I could become if I stopped destroying myself long enough to meet him.

And suddenly, breathing felt a little easier.

Maybe the universe wasn’t punishing me.

Maybe it wasn’t abandoning me either.

Maybe it had been speaking all along, and I simply hadn’t understood the language yet.

I used to believe surviving meant fighting everything that came toward me.

Now I think survival sometimes means becoming quiet enough to recognize when life is offering you another chance.

I don’t know exactly where I’m going.

I don’t know what’s waiting for me.

And for once, I don’t need to.

I’m still here.

I’m listening now.

And I can breathe.