Deep words

‎Choosing Myself First

‎I used to think love meant becoming smaller. Folding my wants into quiet corners, wrapping my needs in brown paper and sliding them under the bed like winter clothes no one would miss until frostbite came. I learned early how to read a room before I read a book, how to measure the temperature of someone else's silence and call it weather. If they were thunder, I became the field. If they were fire, I became the wick. I mistook survival for devotion. There is a particular ache that comes from clapping for others with hands that have never been held. A specific loneliness in being the strong one, the patient one, the understanding one, while your own heart waits in line like a child with a crumpled drawing no one has time to see. I was fluent in almost. Almost enough. Almost loved. Almost chosen. And I wore that almost like a medal pinned too tight to my chest. I told myself: This is what good people do. They bend. They stretch. They absorb. They apologize for taking up air. So I made myself smaller and smaller until even my sadness had to whisper. But grief is not polite. It does not knock. It seeps through floorboards, rises through the plumbing, blooms in the lungs. It found me one night in the quiet after another compromise, after another “it’s fine,” after another meal where I fed everyone else and swallowed my hunger whole. I sat on the edge of my bed and felt it— not anger, not quite— but a trembling truth: No one was coming to choose me. Not the lovers who liked the convenience of my forgiveness. Not the friends who borrowed my strength like a coat and forgot to return it. Not the family who confused my silence with agreement. And the realization was not dramatic. It did not arrive with fireworks. It arrived like a mirror. Clear. Unforgiving. Tender. It said: If you do not pick yourself, you will spend your life waiting in a room you built for others. So I began the slow rebellion of turning inward. It felt selfish at first— like stealing bread from a table where I had always been the server. I said no and my voice shook as if it had never carried my own name before. I rested without earning it. I cried without explaining it. I left without providing a thesis statement. Each boundary felt like tearing fabric from my own skin. Each step toward myself was a step away from someone who preferred me unfinished. But something miraculous happened in the wreckage of their disappointment: I survived it. The sky did not collapse because I would not hold it up. The world did not end because I chose sleep over sacrifice. Instead— I began to hear myself. A quiet pulse beneath the noise. A rhythm that had been steady all along, patient, waiting for me to listen. Choosing myself first did not mean I stopped loving. It meant I stopped abandoning. I learned that empathy without self-compassion is just slow erosion. I learned that boundaries are not walls— they are doors with locks I am allowed to use. I began to ask: What do I need? And then— to answer honestly. Sometimes the answer was rest. Sometimes it was distance. Sometimes it was grief for the years I spent mistaking exhaustion for virtue. There are still days when guilt knocks loudly, when old habits stretch their arms and whisper, “Be good. Be easy. Be less.” But I am learning that goodness does not require disappearance. That love does not demand my extinction. I am learning to sit with my own ache as gently as I once sat with others’. To cradle my own fears like fragile birds. To forgive myself for surviving the only way I knew how. Choosing myself first is not a declaration. It is a practice. It is waking up and asking my body how it feels before asking the world what it wants. It is feeding my hunger before serving the feast. It is saying: I matter. Not more than you— but not less. And in this choosing there is a strange, soft light. I am no longer a field waiting for someone else's storm. I am the sky. Wide enough to hold grief and joy together. Strong enough to weather my own seasons. Gentle enough to let the sun touch my own face first. I am learning that I can love you without leaving me. That I can stay without shrinking. That I can give without disappearing. And for the first time, when I whisper my own name into the quiet, it answers. .
by Stevie Flood Author
‎

The true horror of existence is not the fear of death, but the fear of life. It is the fear of waking up each day to face the same struggles, the same disappointments, the same pain. It is the fear that nothing will ever change, that you are trapped in a cycle of suffering that you cannot escape. And in that fear, there is a desperation, a longing for something, anything, to break the monotony, to bring meaning to the endless repetition of days.

~Albert Camus

Always do good when you can, for we shall pass this way only but once.

The message teaches us that good deeds are lasting investments in humanity. True leadership is expressed through service, compassion, and selflessness. While positions and possession may fade, the good we do lives on in the hearts of people.

Words from a wise man
The famous quote of Igwe Dr. M. N Ugochukwu, OFR.
Abilikete 1 na umunze

Some days are extraordinary—not because everything goes right, but because everything feels real. The air is heavier, the moments sharper, and even the quiet carries weight. You feel more exposed, more awake, like your skin has been pulled back and you’re meeting life without armor. Joy hits deeper, pain lingers longer, and nothing feels diluted.

These are the days that don’t ask for perfection. They ask for honesty. They remind you of who you are beneath routines, expectations, and noise. You notice small things—the way light falls, the sound of your own breath, the truth in a conversation you almost avoided. It’s raw, sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes beautiful, often both at once.

And long after the day ends, it stays. Not as a memory you replay, but as something that subtly shifts you. A quiet reminder that being alive isn’t about smoothness or control—it’s about presence. About letting yourself feel it all, without softening the edges.

Stevie Flood

If I Could Have One More Conversation

There are moments in life when we realize the weight of words left unsaid. A question we never asked, a truth we never shared, or a small apology we never offered. We think we will have time for another phone call, another visit, or another quiet evening together but sometimes time slips through our fingers faster than we expect.

We imagine what we would say if we could speak again. Not grand speeches or confessions, just the ordinary honesty of connection: “I see you,” “I forgive you,” “I love you,” or simply, “Tell me how you really feel.” These thoughts can linger for years, quietly shaping how we approach the people who remain in our lives, and how we remember those who are gone.

It is not regret alone that makes the wish so heavy. It is the awareness of what we often take for granted: that love is an exchange, not a guarantee. We assume it will endure, that it will absorb our impatience, our anger, our distractions. Yet the truth is that love is fragile. Its strength is in presence, in conversation, in attention. And when we stop giving those things, even for a moment, we risk losing the chance to make them matter.

The wish for one more conversation is not about dwelling in the past. It is about remembering the extraordinary ordinary work of being human together, of listening, sharing, admitting, laughing, sitting in silence... It is a reminder that our connections deserve more than the leftovers of our attention, more than what remains after we are done dealing with the world. They deserve our focus, our care, our courage to reach across the distance even when it feels awkward or difficult.

Sometimes, we do get that chance. Sometimes, we learn to speak before it is too late. And sometimes, we carry the memory of what we would have said as a quiet guide to how we live and love from that moment forward.

~Deep words