This story has followed me for years.
Not in any structured way.It was never scheduled, outlined, or disciplined. It was just… there. Sitting in the back of my mind. In folders I renamed every time I swore I was going to finish it. In half-written documents, some buried so deep I forgot where I put them. Some written late at night when I was too tired to think clearly — but I always came back to it.
There were years when I didn't touch it at all. When writing felt impossible, or pointless. When life got too heavy, or too quiet, or too loud. But the story never left. It lingered, like a thread waiting to be picked up again.
It started out as fiction — still is, mostly — but somewhere along the way, it became something else too. A small, safe place to channel things I didn't have words for. A way to take the weight in my chest and reshape it into scenes and silence and characters that kept going, even when I couldn't.
When I started going to therapy, I was told to try talking to myself — gently, honestly, without judgment. I didn't know how. So I wrote.
Little by little, those notes to myself turned into drafts. Into moments where I could process what hurt in a way that felt manageable. If something cut too deep, I wrote through it. Not always well, not always clearly. But writing gave the pain somewhere to go.
Now that I've quit my job to focus on myself, I've started opening those drafts again. I've begun pulling pieces out of the fog, polishing them slowly, carefully. Still stumbling. Still learning. Still an amateur in more ways than one... I kinda suck at writing I will be honest.
But I'm trying.
And I'm healing through the drafts I write.
If this story finds someone else out there — even quietly — I hope it lets them feel a little more seen. Even if they don't remember why they needed it.
Thank you for being here.
The story ties itself together more as it moves forward.There's probably way too much character building early on, but that's how it came out of me — slowly, in pieces.
I just hope I can shape it into something coherent — or at least a meaningful mess — by the time I reach chapter 40.That's where my drafts end, anyway.
– Kurokawa Rei