The Summer My Hunger Came Back

I never thought I would write these words. Certainly not one month after my last post.

A month ago, I packed my bags and took my kingdom on holiday - the whole of it. The colorful Bird, the watchful Monster, the grey Cloud, the Burnt-Out Candle. Loud, uncomfortable, exhausting guests, folded into my luggage between the swimsuits and the sunscreen.

I left tired. Tired in my body, tired in my soul. I left with very few hopes of coming back different.

And yet.

Something changed. Or rather - I changed.

It happened the way real things happen: gradually, one day at a time, without announcing itself. Until one morning I woke up and felt different. I felt WELL. For the first time in three years.

It was strange, and beautiful, and frightening. I hadn't felt that way in so long that at first, I didn't even recognize it. The awareness came later. It came with energy. With presence. With intention. It came with moments of pure, unreasonable joy.

It came with hunger.

Hunger for food. Hunger for beautiful things. Hunger for smiles. After all this time, my body and my soul were asking - demanding - to be nourished. Not to keep surviving. To live.

So I fed them. In every way I could. I can't remember the last time I felt this strong, this beautiful, this much mine.

Do you remember the fairy tale I left you with in July? The one that ended with a family sitting in the quiet, waiting for a little candle to find its spark again?

Somewhere in those slow, unguarded days - it did.

Let me be honest with you, because honesty is the only currency this blog has ever traded in: the guests have not disappeared. Some of them probably never will. The Bird still flies, the Monster still checks the locks at night, the Cloud still knows the way to my chest. But something fundamental has shifted. The kingdom is mine again. Not theirs. They live here - they don't rule here.

And now the holidays are over. Life has picked up its rhythm again, and the same machinery that once crushed me is turning, right on schedule, as if nothing happened. But something did happen. And I have no intention of letting myself be destroyed a second time.

I know what this will require. I will have to stay alert. Learn to catch the warning signals early, before they become storms. Contain the relapses, if they come - and they might. I will have to defend myself, and defend this kingdom I fought so hard to take back, from everything and everyone that puts it in danger.

I can't make promises about the future. Nobody who has hosted these guests honestly can. But I can make one promise to myself: I will do everything in my power to keep feeling like this. To keep feeding the hunger.

I owe it to myself. To my husband. To my children - especially to a small boy with a gentle hand who once relit a candle without even knowing it. To my family, my friends, and everyone who kept sitting at the gates of the kingdom while the weather was bad.

We deserve this. All of us.

It's good to be back.