Natalie Audelo

I want to say thank you, please, I love you so many times that the words become a prayer. I want to hold eye contact and smile with warmth long enough for a nervous heart to steady. I want to listen until sorrow speaks in a dialect I can understand. Because once, when I was all edge, someone handed me gentleness I had not earned, and it softened... See more

To love humans is not optimism; it requires an unrelenting, deliberate faith, the stubborn act of catching every dropped match and insisting it can still light a candle. It is choosing to notice the softness happening everywhere: a stranger pressing tissues into another’s palm, a barista sliding an extra biscuit across the counter, the way a lover... See more

I am grieving a life I’ve been disloyal to; too busy auditioning for all the ones I could have instead.

And I do not want more doors—I want to walk through one without looking back. I want to love something long enough to feel it love me in return. I want to lay foundations on imperfect soil and call it home anyway.

But I have lost myself in a million other people. I’m no longer fluent in my own language. I’ve consumed so many dreams that weren’t... See more

I am a thousand almosts, held together by hesitation; a gallery of repainted selves.

They told us we are lucky, to live in an era of endless doors; of infinite selves waiting to be summoned with a scroll, a post, or a step-by-step transformation.

But no one warned us of the disease it carries. Of how too much possibility can fray the edges of a person.