It doesn’t happen all at once. No dramatic collapse. No loud goodbye. Just small things. The way you don’t react like you used to. The way certain dreams don’t feel yours anymore. The way your reflection looks familiar… but distant. You tell yourself you’re just tired. Just growing. Just going through a phase. But deep down, you know something is shifting. You’re not breaking. You’re thinning. Like color draining slowly from a photograph. Like a voice getting quieter inside your own head. Like fire that used to roar now learning how to whisper. And the strange part is you’re aware of it. You feel the edges of who you were softening. You feel old passions losing weight. You feel certain versions of you slipping through your fingers. Not violently. Quietly. That’s what makes it unsettling. Because fading isn’t always failure. Sometimes it’s survival. Sometimes it’s growth. Sometimes it’s what happens when the old skin can’t stretch any further. But when you stand in that space between who you were and who you’re becoming it doesn’t feel poetic. It feels lonely. It feels like standing in a fire that doesn’t destroy you… but changes your shape. And maybe that’s the real tension inside this piece. You’re not sure if you’re disappearing… or if you’re shedding the parts of you that were never meant to last. So here’s the question that lingers: If you can feel yourself fading… are you losing who you are or are you finally making space for who you’re meant to become?