Today, waking up was hard. Waking up was remembering yesterday; it was remembering the length of today. It was gazing up at a mountain I wished I had already climbed. I began the climb anyways, lifted my heavy head from its wilting pillow, for I’ve learned to do what is needed of me.

I liked brushing my hair, though. It became soft under my imagination. It grows; I like the idea of growth. Washing my skin was like a rainstorm, scrubbing away what is bad and letting myself forget everything but how the light refracts in the streets melancholily, refracting back only sweet puddles and second chances. I do a good job at getting rid of the bad stuff. I do a good job at pretending I washed it away.

This burden is here only because I forgot I didn't have to bring it.

I went to class to learn of humanity, of techniques I can utilize to help me identify what hurts. The bad thing about humanity is its painful (Martin Luther King Jr. wanted only to carry out his dream), leaving me blinking away tears during lectures (hundreds of Rwandan-genocide rape victims go without justice to this very day), and closing my eyes in between breaths (women hold less than thirty percent of government positions across the United States as of 2019). But I can still be okay inside of humanity; I’m held back only by solid but shatterable glass walls, not cemented or steal barriers.

I sat at a table and tried to engage myself, tried to remember why I love the people I love. Love is tricky, because it comes with so many dead ends. I love you but I’m growing; I love you but I’m hurting; I love you but I’m leaving. Faces looked different after he left, more lonely or isolated. Or maybe that was just me.

This isolation exists only because I forgot that I exist in spite of it.

I like remembering like this, when words are my double-edged sword and I can bend the forces of language to what I desire them to be. It's one of the only things I can wield; the only thing I can claim as an answer to my question, not just a question mark to my sentence; one of the only things I can rely on when boys tell me I’m pretty and then want to see proof.

My blankets sometimes whisper as I climb into them, reminding me there is sense in this suffering. This is a good moment, I think, remembering what is soft. It is easy to love, easy to learn, easy to laugh. It is easy to rest, to sleep after a day of persistence.

This hopelessness exists only because I forgot to fight against it.

Tomorrow is yet another mountain, and yesterday is too easy to condemn. My burden might stay heavy, my isolation and hopelessness might prevail. But I see my hair is longer since I last cut it and I am reminded of my growth. My growth can be steady, even when everything else is not. I am growing, I whisper, watching as my past converges to this one moment.

I am growing only so long as I continue waking up.