Phoenix Diaries: The Chapter Where I’m Not Okay (But I’m Still Here)

The messy, unresolved, wildly inconvenient middle.

Phoenix Diaries
Personal stories of transformation, heartbreak, and rebuilding from ground zero.

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There is a space no one prepares you for.

It's not grief, exactly. It's not healing, either. It's the weird, stretched-out purgatory between who you were and whoever the hell you're about to become. It's not a breakdown. It's not a breakthrough. It's the middle. The messy, unresolved, wildly inconvenient middle.

This is where I live now.

Photo by Mitchel Lensink on Unsplash

One book of my life has ended. Fully. Gone. I didn't just finish a chapter; I turned the last page of a story I had never thought would end. And now, I'm not beginning a new chapter. I'm writing an entirely new book. Blank pages. A different genre. One paragraph at a time.

And right now? I'm somewhere in the opening scene, where the character is standing in the middle of the kitchen at 11:04 am, still in yesterday's pyjamas and stink, wondering what the plot is. Everyone talks about the Phoenix rising. No one tells you about the part where she's sitting in soot with no feathers, wondering if she should try to become a dragon instead!

(I mean... I'd be a badass dragon.)

I'm 45. And time hits differently now. I can see the end of the road from here. Not close enough to panic, but close enough to stop pretending I'm not afraid. My knees crack louder. My hormones don't whisper—they riot. Hello, perimenopause! My face is changing. My body is shifting. My energy has become a sacred currency. There is no more pretending I'll get to it "someday."

And yet, while everything is screaming start again, my nervous system is still dragging its feet through the ruins. It hasn't caught up.

There are days I feel brave, days when I think, "Hell yes, I can do this." There are days when my courage shows up first, throws the covers off, and tells the fear to sit the fuck down.

And then there are days when I feel like I'm crumbling under the weight of it all, where brushing my teeth feels like a bold act of rebellion. Where I cry in the grocery store because they're out of coconut milk, but really, it's not about the coconut milk, is it?

Sometimes, I wonder if the light I saw ahead was just a trick of the glare.

Where the roller coaster of emotion jerks me from, maybe I've got this to what the fuck am I doing before I've even made my matcha in the morning.

And the exhaustion—oh, the exhaustion.

I have never felt tired like this.

It's not just a lack of sleep. It's soul-level, bone-deep, grief-lined fatigue. It lives in my skin, my thoughts, my jaw. It's emotional, physical, mental, hormonal. Every cell in my body whispers, "Please, not today."

And still—

I'm here.

I'm writing, I'm creating.

I'm laughing at the absurdity of it all, me, trying to build a new life like I'm in some divine boot camp for late bloomers.

I'm still finding slivers of beauty:

In the grocery store flowers, I can't afford but I buy them anyway.

In the texts from friends who still believe in me (how I love my friends).

In a meme that makes me laugh through my mascara.

In the way the sun hits my tea at 2:14 pm, like it's trying to remind me: you're alive, babe. Keep going.

I'm still getting up, even if I don't bounce.

Still letting my heart crack open, even if no one sees it.

Still choosing not to turn to stone.

This chapter isn't neat. It's not inspiring. It might not even have a plot yet.

But it's real.

And it's mine.

If you are in your own in-between, if you're staring at the ceiling at midnight, wondering if this is what reinvention feels like, if you're rebuilding a life with shaky hands and a stubborn heart.

You're not alone.

This chapter sucks.

But we're still here.

And maybe that's the most radical thing we can say right now:

I'm not okay. But I'm still here.

And above all the clouds?

There is still a blue sky.

xo,

Tanya

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