Raw.Real.Recovered.

I hate this place.

This place right here — the in-between.

The space after the heartbreak, after the goodbye, after the mental door has been shut, locked, and sealed with a whispered prayer you had to force out through tears.

You know you’re not going back.

You know it wasn’t meant to be.

You’ve accepted the truth — not because it’s easy, but because lying to yourself got too exhausting.

But you’re also not free yet.

You’re not skipping through life screaming “I’m healed!”

You’re not broken, but you’re not whole.

You’re functioning, but your soul still limps.

This place?

This is the middle.

And it’s a strange kind of hell, honestly.

You’re not deeply depressed anymore. You’re not crying every morning.

But joy feels… muted.

Distractions feel hollow.

And the idea of “just going out and having fun” makes you want to scream because fun feels like a betrayal when your heart is still recalibrating.

You don’t want to sit and reflect anymore — you’ve reflected your damn self into exhaustion.

And you don’t want to pretend everything is great.

You just want something real.

But what’s real in the middle feels so quiet.

The middle is where most people get stuck.

Because it’s not dramatic enough to demand help, and not healed enough to move on.

But let me tell you something hard and honest:

You’re not doing it wrong.

You’re not broken because you haven’t “moved on” yet.

You’re just in it — and it’s okay to be here longer than you’d like.

So what are we supposed to do in the middle?

We rest.

Not “lay around doing nothing” rest — but the deep, soul-preserving rest that says:

I don’t need to earn my healing by doing more.

I just need to be for a while.

We stop forcing reflection.

You don’t have to keep ripping the wound open to prove you’re dealing with it.

Some healing happens in silence.

Some of it happens while you’re washing dishes or folding laundry or taking a breath on your porch.

We stop trying to escape it.

Distractions won’t fix it.

Jumping into someone new won’t fix it.

Scrolling won’t fix it.

This isn’t about avoiding — this is about surrendering. Let the middle do its job.

And we stay grateful — not performative, not fake. Just… quietly aware that blessings still exist in the middle.

Because here’s the thing no one tells you:

You don’t wake up one day healed.

You slowly wake up piece by piece.

One day you laugh — and it’s real.

One day the song doesn’t sting.

One day you remember the love — and it doesn’t hurt, it just exists.

One day you notice: Hey, I feel light again.

Until then?

Just keep showing up.

Even if it’s just for coffee and breath.

Even if it’s just to remind yourself that you are not what you lost.

You are what you’re becoming.

And that middle ground?

It’s not a dead zone.

It’s the birthplace of your next chapter.

Keep going.

Even slowly.

Especially slowly.