...Fractures and Me

There is a kind of pain that does not shout.

It sits quietly in you as you watch someone with so much promise bend under what they carry within.

You see the good. Clear as day.
But you also see the patterns. The cycles.
The way help turns into control.
The way intention becomes noise.
The way solutions create problems that were not there before.

And you ask yourself
How do I reach them without losing myself

Because they are not evil.
Just not whole yet.
And none of us is infallible, no matter how certain we sound.

There is a tension here.
To believe in someone and still hold the truth about them.
To stay, but not become the weight they refuse to drop.
To offer light, but not force sight.

I have come to see this
You cannot become the fix for another person’s fractures.
You can only be a mirror that does not lie.
Steady. Clear. Present.

If they choose the light, you will see it.
If they do not, you must still keep yours.

So I stay, but with boundaries.
I care, but without surrendering clarity.
I hope, but I do not carry what is not mine.

Because the goal is not to stand at the centre of their storm.
It is to remain whole, so that if they ever step out of it,
there is still light to meet them.

Nugget
Care deeply. But never at the cost of your own centre.