First, it wore chalk-dusted hands
and the rhythm of a gymnast's landing,
every leap loud enough
to drown out the noise inside.
Then it became music,
headphones pressed tight like armor,
each song a small light
against a storm I could not name.
Then came emptiness,
mistaken for control,
counting hunger like victories
while something deeper kept losing.
Then came lines where words should have been,
attempts to carve order
from a mind that felt too crowded,
too heavy,
too tired.
Then came fencing.
A mask.
A blade.
A strip of metal and a line to follow.
For a little while,
the world became simple:
advance,
retreat,
parry,
lunge.
The noise could wait
until practice was over.
And music and fencing—
those worked best.
Music understood the feelings
I could never explain.
Fencing gave my hands
something to do with the energy
my mind could not hold.
If music was the thing that softened the edges,
fencing was the thing that kept me moving.
It still is.
Because there is a goal
waiting somewhere beyond today.
A dream that has survived
every bad week,
every sleepless night,
every moment I thought about giving up.
The Olympics.
Not because medals can fix a mind,
or because victory erases pain,
but because there is still a version of me
standing at the end of that path,
and I am not ready to abandon them.
But now the disguises are wearing thin.
The gym is only a room.
The songs do not always reach me.
The blade feels heavier than it used to.
And exhaustion settles in—
not the kind that sleep can cure,
but the kind that fills every corner,
turning thoughts into stones.
It is carrying a backpack
that nobody else can see.
It is fighting battles all day
and having no proof
that they happened.
Some days,
even the things that save me
cannot save me completely.
Yet I still lace my shoes.
I still put on the mask.
I still press play.
Because somewhere beneath the exhaustion,
beneath the noise,
beneath the endless weight of trying,
there is a dream
refusing to let go of me.
And for now,
that is enough to takeone more step forward.