Salt, Air, And Scars

The mist comes in from the Atlantic slowly,
As if it has nowhere else to be.
It moves over the hills,
Through the gorse turned grey,
And settles without asking permission.
The wind is blunt,
And the rain arrives without ceremony.

I stand where land meets salt air,
Trying to feel something lighter,
But the beauty here presses in on me.
Ireland is too alive for the heaviness I carry.
I came here thinking distance might help,
That water between places could thin the noise in my head,
But my mind crosses oceans easily.
It brings its weight with it.

The hills are impossibly green,
Steady in a way I am not.
The green feels almost unfair,
Against the darkness in my chest.
I stand among them feeling out of step,
As if beauty is happening in another language.
I keep waiting for clarity,
For a moment when everything lifts,
But it doesn’t.

Yet, this land does not demand I be fine.
It lets the rain fall without apology.
The land accepts its own roughness,
The Erosion, the scars, the weathered edges
and still continues to exist.
The mist stays even when it obscures,
Teaching me how to pass, not hide.
Here, broken is not the end of the tale.
Walls stand crooked, yet still prevail,
Fields recover without becoming perfect.
So maybe my mind, cracked and sore,
Is not failing, just learning more.

So I stop trying to feel better,
And focus on staying.
And somewhere between rain and silence,
I learn that being unwell
is not the same as being lost.
I begin to understand that healing might look like this,
Not escape, not relief,
But endurance without self-punishment.
It’s staying present while the fog is here.

I breathe with the sea, uneven and slow.
I let the thoughts drift
Without chasing them into the dark.
Here, between stone and water,
Nothing needs fixing.
I can stand. I can rest.
I can simply be.
And for now, that is enough.