~saebdesigner~®️ ©️
There is a gentle breeze in the midday of spring, soft against my skin. I close my eyes, feeling the warmth of the sun across my face, and for a heartbeat, I am just a person in a field. But the silence here is a hard-won prize, a quiet I once thought I would never hear.
As I sit here, my mind inevitably drifts back to the younger times-times that weren’t always beautiful. I remember the air tasting of smoke instead of spring, the distant, low rumble of a world at war with itself. There were years when the house felt colder than the winter outside, where words were often sharp and abusive, leaving bruises on the spirit that no one could see. I grew up in a generation that felt fractured, surrounded by a bitterness and a heavy, suffocating sadness that seemed to swallow the light before it could even reach the ground.
In those days, dreaming felt like a dangerous thing to do. I spent so many nights hoping for a love that was actually lovable—a kindness that didn’t come with a price or a hidden sting. I longed for a calm that wasn’t just the fragile silence between arguments.
But looking back now, I see how those dreams were born in the middle of that chaos. I open my eyes and look across the long, rectangular cloth spread over the grass. Across from me sits my soulmate, my friend since childhood. We are the survivors of those grey years. We spent our youth navigating the wreckage together, shielding each other from the storms, and now, we finally get to spend our time enjoying the simple, radical gift of laughter.
Everything is calmer now. The birds are chirping, a sound that used to be drowned out by the noise of a world in conflict. To my left, the trees sway in a breeze that carries only the scent of sweet, clean air—no smoke, no fear, no echoes of the past.
I reach out and find their hand, feeling the solid, steady reality of the present. The scars of those abusive years are still there, but they have faded into thin, silver lines that no longer ache. We have moved from the darkness of the trenches into this golden midday, proving that even after a lifetime of war, the sun can still find a way to warm your face. We are finally home.
