Autumn to ashes

Some people think surviving an attempt to end it all is failure, but it's not. It's an unexpected beginning, a disturbance in the timeline, a place where everything could’ve ended… and it  didn’t.

There’s something strange and sacred about that moment after. When you realize: You’re still here. The world hasn't changed, but something inside you has. The old self, the one crushed under impossible expectations, shame, numbness, or despair, cracked open. And maybe, just maybe, part of it didn’t make it through, and that's good. That version needed to go.

 Autumn to ashes means laying down the life that was slowly destroying you. It’s choosing not to carry what you were never meant to bear. The masks, the scripts, the quiet compliance, it all goes. Not out of spite, but out of necessity. Because staying alive becomes an act of rebellion. A radical reclaiming.

To survive the edge is to return with fire in your chest. You no longer owe the world the version of yourself that nearly didn’t survive it. You’re free to start over. No explanations, no apologies.

Yes, it’s okay to end a version of yourself and let that particular false "self" burn. 

Live as if the rules don’t apply anymore, because once you’ve been to the edge, you get to make your own.

There’s a silence that comes before the decision, heavy and slow, like fog settling on a quiet lake. It doesn’t always look like the movies. It can be a whisper, a thought that repeats itself just loud enough to drown everything else out: I can’t do this anymore. I don't want to. 

And that thought doesn’t always mean you want to go, sometimes, it means you want out of the version of your life that’s been crushing you. The version of yourself you've been carrying like a burden. The one who smiles out of habit, apologizes for existing, bends until they snap, and still feels like it’s not enough. That’s the self we long to end, not with violence, but with truth. Surviving an attempt to end it all is often misunderstood. It’s not just survival, it’s transformation. 

It’s being thrown into the fire and somehow walking out, not untouched, but alive, and more than alive: changed.

The part of you that lived for approval. That clung to a job, a relationship, a version of your identity that wasn’t yours, that carried trauma like it was your inheritance. That believed suffering was the price of love, and silence was safety. That self was never built to survive. It was built to cope.

So you let it burn, metaphorically, spiritually, emotionally, and patiently let it result into ashes.

And when you wake up on the other side, maybe in a hospital bed, maybe just in your room with a rope burn, or tear-stained sheets, something has shifted. Life doesn’t rush back in like a miracle. It trickles. Quiet, and perhaps uncertain, but it’s there, and you are still here. That’s liberation. Not because it’s over, but because now, you get to live without pretending. Without the mask. Without the rules that were never yours to begin with.

Let what is false dissolve, let the stories that kept you small burn to ash. Let the fear that made you shrink be buried. Live as someone who has nothing left to prove, live like you already walked through the fire, because you did.

You don’t owe anyone the version of yourself that almost didn’t make it, you get to rebuild on your terms, in your time, using your own beautiful human imagination. 

This isn’t failure. This is becoming, so yes, let the false "self" burn, and then, begin again.

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