The Last Day of March

Day 128 – March 31, 2026

The last day of March feels less like an ending and more like a woman standing in a doorway with one hand still on the frame. Not clinging. Not hesitating exactly. Just noticing.

That’s what today felt like. A noticing.

The month is ending. Spring is no longer flirting. It’s here. Or at least trying very hard to convince me of that. The light is different. The air is softer in a way that would have felt suspicious to me not that long ago. Even the trees are starting to look less haunted and more like they’ve remembered something worth doing with themselves.

Good for them. And me? I think I’m remembering too.

Not innocence. Not simplicity. Not some sweeter, softer version of myself that existed before life started showing its teeth more clearly. I’m not interested in romanticizing that girl anymore. She was lovely, yes. But she did not yet know what I know. She did not yet understand the architecture of survival, the price of awareness, the emotional absurdity of continuing, the fact that softness without discernment is just a prettier form of self endangerment.

No.

What I’m remembering now is something else.

Myself.

Not the old self. Not the “healed” self. Just myself, but more exact.

That feels like what March was. Not transformation in the dramatic sense. Not a phoenix. Not a breakthrough montage. March felt more like sediment settling. More like the water slowly clearing enough for me to see what’s actually at the bottom of things.

And what’s there?

A woman who is still angry. Still disappointed. Still heartbroken in places. Still carrying the insult of what happened and the even greater insult of the fact that the man who did it is still free while I am the one expected to carry all this reality with good posture and a functioning calendar.

That is still true. I want that said plainly.

Because I am not interested in ending the month on some false note of peace. March did not erase anything. Spring does not absolve brutality. A little better light does not make the past less violent or the present less complicated.

But this is also true. I am still here. Still writing. Still noticing. Still making something out of all of this that is more honest, more beautiful, and more alive than what hurt me ever deserved to touch. Still funny in the middle of darkness. Still wanting beautiful things. Still sweet. Still significantly harder to forget.

That matters. I think March gave me more of myself back.

Not in one clean piece. In flashes. In instincts. In language. In laughter. In refusal. In standards. In the way I’ve been able to feel spring at the edge of things without immediately distrusting every soft moment like it’s trying to sell me something.

That’s not nothing. That’s a woman coming back into her own atmosphere.

Roger, naturally, ended the month with the same emotional priorities he brought into it. Snacks, surveillance, dramatic reactions to invisible threats, and total devotion to me as if I am both his best friend and his entire .

Honestly? A dream.

He has no interest in symbolic endings. No need to “reflect.” No relationship to monthly closure whatsoever. For him, life remains a very immediate sequence of important feelings, suspicious sounds, nap opportunities, and the ongoing question of whether I might drop food at any moment.

There is something sacred in that level of commitment to the present. Maybe that’s part of what I’m taking with me too. Not closure. Presence. Not a lesson. A sharper way of living.

Not a tidy final sentence for the month. Just the truth.

March happened. It was strange. It was real. It carried winter out by the throat and dragged spring in by the wrist. And somewhere in the middle of all that, I kept becoming a woman I trust more.

That feels like enough.

Chaos in one hand. Grace in the other.

And me, on the last day of March, still standing in the doorway not waiting to be saved, not asking to be understood, just ready for whatever I decide April is allowed to touch.