Some days, he felt like a stranger to himself. He could laugh with someone he loved and still feel an unexplained sadness. He could be proud of how far he'd come and terrified of what came next. He tried to understand which feeling was the real one. The hopeful one. The angry one. The frightened one. The one who wanted to disappear for a while. But the harder he searched for a single answer, the more pieces of himself he found. Until he realized he didn't have to choose. He could be grateful and exhausted. Brave and afraid. Healing and still hurting. Maybe he wasn't falling apart. Maybe he had simply been expecting himself to be one thing at a time.