The Fire Is Still Here

Day 71 – February 2, 2026

Today I realized something important.

Everything that happened last year did not extinguish the fire inside me. If anything, it clarified it. That feels worth saying slowly, because there is a difference between being burned and being erased, and I have spent enough time in the aftermath to know exactly which one happened.

I was burned and changed. Dragged through fear, grief, violation, survival, and all the ugly little administrative details that follow when your life gets split open by someone else’s cruelty.

But erased? Never.

There is a very particular kind of strength that develops when you survive something that should have broken you. And I don’t mean the loud kind. Not swagger. Not performance. Not that exhausting, filtered version of strength people love to parade around online like confidence is just a good angle and an inspirational caption.

I mean certainty.

The kind that settles into your bones after you’ve seen yourself in the worst light imaginable and realized you are still there. Still breathing. Still thinking. Still capable of telling the truth even when your body is begging you not to. Still capable of dragging your life forward when the foundation has cracked and everyone else is out here acting like “resilience” is a personality trait instead of hard labor.

That kind of certainty changes you.

Because once you know what fear feels like, like really know it, you stop romanticizing smaller terrors. Once you know what it means to speak while shaking, to survive while unraveling, to keep rebuilding when no part of the process feels noble or cinematic, other things lose some of their power.

People’s opinions, for example. How funny that those ever mattered.

I think that’s part of what I felt today. Not “I am fearless now,” because let’s not embarrass ourselves with nonsense. Fear still exists. Trauma did not politely excuse itself just because I’ve become more interesting. But fear is no longer the only force in the room.

There is something else now. Something hotter. Something cleaner. Something less frantic and more deliberate.

Fire.

Not the wild kind that destroys just to prove it can. The controlled kind. The expensive kind. The kind that lights the room and changes the temperature without once needing to explain itself. That’s what survived.

The part of me that is curious and difficult and too alive to be reduced by what happened. The part that still wants things. Still notices beauty. Still notices absurdity. Still notices people, which may be my most deranged trait of all considering the educational year I just had.

But I do. And that matters.

Because if the fire is still here, then so am I. Not just in the technical sense. Not just in the “well, she’s still breathing and making coffee and taking the dog out” sense. I mean in the deeper sense. The real me.

The one who asks questions. The one who reads a room in five seconds and then smiles like she doesn’t already know. The one who can be soft without being stupid, warm without being available for harm, and sharp without apologizing for the edge.

That woman is still here. Maybe more fully here now than she has ever been.

Roger spent most of the evening sleeping beside me like a snoring guardian with no concept of irony and complete faith in tomorrow. His confidence in the future remains absolute. Honestly? I’m beginning to understand the appeal.

Because if I can survive last year and still feel this fire in me, this intelligence, this nerve, this appetite for truth and life and whatever comes next. Then maybe the story is not “look what happened to her.” Maybe it’s “look what survived.” That feels more accurate. And much more interesting.

Chaos in one hand. Grace in the other.

And the fire inside me still very much alive, still beautifully inconvenient, and still entirely too bright to mistake for ruin.