For anyone waiting in the dark—
Here's what they don't tell you about dawn: it starts while the world looks darkest. Somewhere beneath horizon's edge, light is already climbing, rung by invisible rung. Your eyes can't see it yet. Trust anyway. The sun has never missed a morning.
I know your 3 AM. I know the ceiling you've memorized, how doubt sounds when the world goes quiet. I know the bargains you make with tomorrow— just let me see it, just let me make it there. Friend, you will.
The first light isn't dramatic. It's the sky going from black to bruise, from bruise to blush. It's so gradual you'll wonder if you're imagining the loosening dark. You're not. This is how healing happens too— in shades too subtle for anyone but you to notice.
By the time others see you've changed, you'll have been changing for months. By the time the sun crests the hill, it's been rising since midnight. Every transformation starts in the dark, where no one's watching, where faith feels foolish, where you practice becoming what you can't yet see.
Tomorrow's first light is coming. But tonight's darkness is teaching too— teaching you to trust what hasn't happened, to know your own worth without witnesses, to believe in dawns you've never seen. This is the secret: everyone who's ever lived to see morning was once where you are now.
And they made it. And you will too. Light is patient. It waits for no one and everyone. It knows your name.
—From someone who remembers their dark