From Winnie’s Margin

Perfection doesn’t suffocate gently.
It’s incremental.
If this feels familiar, you’re not alone.

I keep checking for
the evidence
that I matter.

Every silence
feels like a verdict.

“you’re not enough.”

Did I say too much?
too little?
too wrong?

My brain keeps
replaying,
ruminating—
every version of
what could have been,
what might have been.

I wonder:
why am I so easy to miss?
to forget?

When will I be enough
to love
without evidence
that I matter.

—Winnie

some truths rot when forced to be swallowed whole

I don’t know how to leave this era
without feeling like I’m tearing
pieces of myself off, bit by bit.

Everyone keeps calling it a move
like it’s neutral,
like it’s boxes and addresses
and logistics to be solved.

It’s not.

It’s losing the quiet at sundown.
The dirt under my nails.
Being needed in a way
that didn’t talk back,
didn’t ask me to perform
didn’t ask me to explain myself.

I don’t want to “grow from this.”
I don’t want to “carry it with me.”
I want this.
I want this life that rebuilt me.
This freedom my soul
has always longed for.

It leaves me angry.
Angry that loving something
this much
turns into a lived experience,
a memory,
instead of the rest of our life.

Angry that doing the right thing
still feels like a loss
that cuts deeper than
the Grand Canyon ever could
Angry that I finally felt free
and now I have to dismantle it
all with my own hands.

Feeling the butterflies for this new adventure
makes me hate myself for the jitters.
Feeling the grief of this loss so fiercely
makes me hate myself for being unable
to let it go.

As we get closer to saying
goodbye, to this life
slipping through my hands,
packing feels like erasure.
Proof that nothing I love
gets to stay sacred for long.

I’m scared I’ll forget
how this version of me felt.
I’m scared I’ll lose
the self I gained here.
I’m scared this was the closest
I’ll ever come to the solitude
I’ve spent my life
desperately searching for.

The frisson I feel as I realize
I don’t know how to do this
without losing the self
I grew to love
by belonging here.

written by Winnie
Elevate Creative

This art piece wasn’t a statement to be shared.
It was created in a moment—
without thought, only what was inside.

And now that my eyes are open, I see:

“them standing
in the shadow of oppression,
watching others beaten,
shot down for having a voice.
hearing screams of horror—
witnesses to executions,
live.

living as if
the world isn’t spinning crimson at all.
functioning.
breathing.
moving on.

feeling powerless
in the face of power.”

I used to think growth had to look chaotic to be real.
Big announcements. Big pivots. Big proof.

But lately, it looks quieter.
More internal. More intentional.

Less “watch me become”
more “I’ve been here the whole time.”

Not everything unfinished is incomplete.
Some things are just… still unfolding.

And I’m still learning how to sit with that.

Order emerges;
it is not imposed.