Journal Entry **When the World Feels Too Heavy** There are days like today when I look around and wonder if the world was ever truly good. Not perfect, just… good. Was there ever a time people weren’t hurting each other, exploiting what little peace we had, or turning beauty into something disposable? I don’t know. Maybe it’s always been this way. Maybe I’m just finally feeling it all at once. It’s exhausting. Like the earth is on fire and I’m trying to catch water with my hands, knowing it’ll never be enough. There’s never enough time to fix one thing before something else breaks. People are tired, but they just keep going pretending like this is normal. Like it’s okay. But it’s not. And I feel it deep in my chest, like the air is heavier now. I want to pause it all. Just for a minute. To breathe. To heal. To not feel like I’m fighting every second to hold it together in a world that’s constantly falling apart. Yes, I’ve seen the good moments. I won’t pretend they don’t exist. I’ve seen strangers help each other, families laugh around dinner tables, sunrises that make you forget just how loud the world gets. But those moments feel like they’re getting further apart. Like they’re becoming the exception instead of the rule. And maybe that’s what breaks my heart the most. Because I still want to believe. Believe that people can change. That we can love better. That we can slow down. That maybe one day, peace won’t be so rare we feel the need to write poems about it just to remember it’s real. But today? Today I’m just tired. It’s okay that I feel more connected to the silence on my walks than I do to most conversations. It’s okay that I look up at the sky and wonder how it stays so calm when everything beneath it is burning. I think the scariest part is how normal this chaos has become. The shootings, the wars, the lies, the way we scroll past someone’s pain like it’s background noise. Like grief is just another headline we’re expected to skim and move on from. I don’t want to get used to this. I don’t want my softness to rot in a world that rewards apathy. I don’t want to be desensitized to the pain of others just to protect myself from feeling too much. Because I do feel too much. Every siren I hear, every injustice, every time someone says “that’s just the way it is”—it digs into me like a splinter I can’t pull out. And even if the good is rare, I still look for it. Maybe that’s what keeps me going. Not hope in the way people talk about it like a shiny word you pin to your chest. But like the way I still get up. Still write. Still care. Even when it hurts.