She once tried to forget.
Tried to fold the past into a drawer with no key,
locked it with a smile,
sealed it with busyness.

But some nights, the wind slipped through her fingers,
and in the sound of her own sigh,
she heard something no one else could:
The voice of the things that were lost.

Not loud. Not resentful.
Just whispers that once were flesh and blood.

Someone once asked her:
—“Why do you keep remembering sad things?”
She replied:
—“Because some things cannot truly be released until they’ve been called by their rightful names.”

She decided to walk back down the path of memory—
not to hold on,
but to say goodbye, like one would to a former love.

She named her first fear:
Abandonment.
She once clung to her mother’s shirt in the schoolyard while other children gathered in groups.
Startled awake at night when the house was too quiet.
Once wondered: If I vanished, would anyone notice?

Then she named the first teacher who shamed her—
for not being “pure” enough.
She remembered his eyes—colder than winter.
The way he judged her,
as if she were an unforgivable flaw.

She once resented him.
But today, she whispered:
“Thank you, teacher. Because of you, I learned to stand—
even when no one stood beside me.”

She named her first love—
the one who claimed to love her for being “different,”
but left when that very difference stopped being “charming.”
She once wrote hundreds of unsent messages,
wondering what she had done wrong.
Now she knows:
She was never wrong.
He just didn’t have a heart wide enough to hold all the layers of hers.

She named an old dream:
To be seen.
As a child, she thought if she studied hard enough, people would love her.
As she grew older, she replaced that dream with degrees, titles, and posts that racked up likes.

But in the middle of that glow,
she felt empty.

And she whispered to that dream:
“I’ve done my best.
But now, I don’t live for recognition.
I live for peace.”

Finally, she named something formless—
A version of herself that had died.

The child who loved the color yellow, believed in fairy tales, and called her father “Superman.”
The teenage girl who wrote journals in purple ink and texted her crush just to ask, “Have you eaten yet?”
The girl who once believed everyone in the world was trustworthy.

She cried when she named that former self.
Not out of regret.
But gratitude.

Because without all those versions of herself—
there would be no woman standing strong in today’s storms.

End of Chapter:

To name the things that were lost
is not to dwell in the past,
but to say a final goodbye—
like the way one sends off a loved one into the beyond, without lingering guilt.

Because she now understands:
What’s lost is not always a loss.
Sometimes, it’s the price of growth.

And when we are brave enough to name our pain,
we become capable of naming joy—
when it comes.