we Were Always Going Home ,

　　　we were always going home ,

yes, i have shifted, more than ten times, if you’re the sort who counts miracles like matchsticks or notches on a headboard. i am not. i do not tally my miracles like debts to be repaid. they arrive not as triumphs, but as returns. familiar. like a song i almost forgot i knew until i was humming it again, accidentally, under the breath of my dreaming.

i do not care if you believe me. i say that without spite. belief was never a prerequisite for truth. you do not have to clap for the moon to rise, nor bow to the ocean to be pulled under. reality does not ask for applause. it simply is.

i shifted after four years. four years of thinking maybe i was broken in some exquisite, cosmic way, cracked just wide enough to want, never wide enough to have. four years of collecting every method like seashells, pressing each one to my ear and listening for home. sometimes i heard static. sometimes i heard blood. sometimes i heard nothing at all. 

there were nights i didn't think i'd live to see morning. i say that with the softest voice possible, not for pity, but because it's true. i don't mean metaphorical dark nights of the soul, i mean the real ones. the kind where your body's still, but your mind is clawing at the walls, begging for a window. the kind where shifting wasn't some spiritual hobby or escapist whim, but a lifeline. a rope thrown into the pit.

i don't know who i would've been if i hadn't believed. not the glowing kind of belief. not the pretty kind. but the cracked, ugly kind. the kind that crawls. the kind that gasps, "please, just let me wake up somewhere else."

so when i say i shifted, i don't say it lightly. it wasn't a party trick. it was a resurrection.

quiet. not cinematic. not some thunderclap of fate. it was a shift like how morning happens, slowly, and then all at once. i remember going to sleep in my room, wrapped in some terrible hoodie, the air stale with the smell of forgetting. and then, like a breath i didn't know i'd been holding: i am there. not will be. not want to be. not maybe one day. i am. right now. here. and there.

it didn't feel like magic. it felt like choosing god, even if you don't know who god is. like giving yourself permission to walk on water not because it's easy, but because the alternative is drowning.

the assumption wasn't loud. it was a hum. a bassline beneath everything. and the moment i tuned into it, the world bent. not to serve me, but to meet me. like it was always trying to.

this is how i got there: i assumed i was there. i used the law.

i wish i had something more elegant to offer. a potion. a spell. a hundred-counted ritual. i don't. i have only assumption. not the performance of it, but the private, unwavering kind. the kind that does not blink. the kind that plants a flag in the dirt and says, "this is mine, because i said so."

i said i was there. so i was. not overnight. not in a blaze of light. it happened like a thread slipping through the eye of a needle, one slow stitch at a time. i told the air around me that my dr was real. i told the silence. i told the toothbrush in my hand, the toothpaste cap i dropped on the floor, the moth blinking against the bathroom light.

i didn't have to fight for it anymore. i didn't have to prove myself worthy. desire is not a courtroom, and the universe is not a jury. i stopped begging. i started being. and slowly, the scaffolding of this reality dissolved.

this wasn't faith. faith is something you carry with trembling hands. this was certainty. this was sitting still long enough for the river to realise it already knew your name. this was recognising that shifting was not a door you unlock with the right key, but a room you have already lived in. the furniture remembers your weight. the walls still echo your voice.

i shifted because i remembered.

and i kept remembering. even when it felt stupid. even when it hurt. even when the forum girls sighed and the scripting girls cried and the cynics said i was lost in a fantasy. maybe i was. but so is everyone. some people just settle for worse ones.

this is what i know: you can get there too. you are not cursed. you are not exempt. the moment you stop performing belief and start inhabiting it, like a house, like a skin, like an inheritance, you will see.

it is not far. it is next. it is with. it is just beyond the veil of doubt, waiting to be spoken aloud like a name that's always been yours.

you do not have to be special. you do not have to be chosen. you do not need a voice in the sky or a star to fall at your feet. you only need to decide. quietly. daily. like it's brushing your teeth. like it's feeding the dog. like it's the most ordinary miracle in the world.

let it be that simple. let it be that unremarkable. you were never meant to earn it. only to remember it. only to open your hands and realise they've been holding the key the whole time.

assume. not with fear, but with fondness. not with hunger, but with homecoming.

and if you don't believe yet, pretend. not out of desperation, but out of reverence. act like you are there not because it will trick the world, but because it will tune you to it. reality doesn't respond to panic. it responds to presence.

so say the toothbrush is yours. say the air smells different. say the cereal tastes sweeter. say the light is warmer. say your name with a little more certainty. you don't need proof. you are the proof.

and do not ask yourself how again. ask when. ask what now. ask am i ready to walk through the door i've been holding shut with both hands all this time?

because the door is open. the light is on. your seat is warm. your name is carved in the table.

come back.