Sunrise

Sunrise

Healing didn’t arrive like a sunrise.
It came like a bruise fading so slowly I almost didn’t notice it was changing color.
At first, the days in Italy were only quieter. Not happier—just quieter. The kind of quiet that lets grief sit beside you without screaming. I stopped counting how many times I cried myself to sleep. I stopped marking the calendar. Time moved whether I acknowledged it or not.
One morning, I woke up and realized I hadn’t dreamed at all.
That terrified me more than the nightmares.
I lay there staring at the cracked ceiling of the small residency apartment, waiting for my chest to tighten, waiting for the familiar panic, for my father’s shadow, my mother’s voice, Cole’s face breaking apart in my mind. But nothing came. Just the hum of the city outside. A scooter passing. Someone laughing somewhere far below.
It felt… wrong.
Later that day, I wandered into the shared studio without a plan. I told myself I was only going to clean my corner, maybe organize the brushes I hadn’t touched since I arrived. My hands shook when I opened my supply box. The smell of paint hit me—oil, turpentine, something alive—and for a second I almost closed it again.
But I didn’t.
I picked up a pencil first. Safer. Less commitment. I drew lines without thinking—crooked windows, unfinished bridges, hands that didn’t quite meet. I didn’t name it. I didn’t judge it. I just let it exist.
That night, I slept for five straight hours.
No nightmares.
No sudden waking with my heart clawing its way out of my ribs.
When I woke up, my pillow was dry.
The people here noticed before I did.
Not in a dramatic way. Just small things. Someone leaving an espresso on my desk without asking. A girl with paint-stained fingers sitting beside me during lunch without forcing conversation. A guy who talked too much about composition and light and never once asked why my eyes always looked tired.
They didn’t save me.
They just didn’t leave.
I started painting again—not the way I used to, chasing perfection or meaning. I painted the way you breathe when you’ve been underwater too long. Slow. Careful. Desperate not to drown.
Some nights, I laughed by accident. It startled me every time, like a sound I didn’t recognize coming from my own body. I’d go quiet afterward, guilt creeping in, wondering if healing meant betrayal—of pain, of memory, of love.
Because no matter how the days softened…
Cole never left my dreams.
Sometimes he was standing across a street I couldn’t cross. Sometimes he was sitting beside me, silent, his presence heavier than words. Sometimes he smiled at me the way he used to—like he already knew what I was about to say—and I would wake up with my chest aching, my fingers curled into the sheets as if I’d been holding his hand.
I stopped fighting those dreams.
I let them come.
Healing, I learned, doesn’t mean forgetting.
It means learning how to carry what didn’t break you—without letting it crush you.
I still miss him.
I still miss home in ways that hurt more on good days than bad ones.
But now, when I paint, my hands don’t shake as much.
Now, when I sleep, I don’t wake up afraid of the dark.
And some mornings, when the light spills through the window just right, I think—
Maybe this isn’t the end of my life.
Maybe it’s the quiet middle.
And maybe… that’s enough for now.

I didn’t notice the healing at first.
It didn’t arrive like a sunrise or a clean breath. It came quietly, almost insulting in how ordinary it felt.
One morning, I woke up and realized I had slept for six straight hours. No jolting. No clawing at my chest. No waking up convinced I’d forgotten something important—someone important. My body felt heavy, but not in pain. Just… tired. Human tired.
I lay there staring at the cracked ceiling of my tiny studio apartment, listening to the distant hum of scooters and voices drifting up from the street below. Italy was always alive, even when I wasn’t. And for the first time in months, that aliveness didn’t feel like it was mocking me.
I didn’t cry that morning.
That alone felt like a miracle.
I started going back to the studio slowly. At first, I only sat there. I’d clean brushes that didn’t need cleaning. I’d rearrange canvases I wasn’t brave enough to touch. I told myself I was “preparing,” but really, I was just reminding my hands that this place used to belong to me.
The first time I painted again, it wasn’t intentional.
I was angry. About nothing and everything. About how healing wasn’t linear. About how some days I still felt like glass, fragile and sharp all at once. I grabbed a palette knife instead of a brush, dragged color across the canvas too hard, too fast. The sound scraped something loose inside me.
I didn’t stop.
It wasn’t beautiful. It wasn’t meant to be. It was messy and uneven and raw, like something that had been buried too long and finally clawed its way out. When I stepped back, my hands were shaking—but I was breathing.
That night, I slept again.
The dreams, though… they never left.
Cole was always there.
Sometimes he was laughing, leaning against a car I didn’t recognize, his eyes soft in that way that used to undo me. Sometimes he was angry, voice tight with words he wouldn’t say. Most nights, he didn’t speak at all. He just looked at me like he was searching for something he’d already lost.
I’d wake up with his name lodged in my throat, my pillow damp, my chest aching in a way that felt older than this life.
I made friends, eventually. Not the dramatic kind. No instant soul connections. Just people who sat beside me without asking too much. People who didn’t flinch when I went quiet. A girl from Madrid who smoked too much and talked about art like it was a religion. A sculptor who hummed while he worked, like silence made him nervous.
They didn’t save me.
They just stayed.
And somehow, that helped.
Some nights, I still stood by the window, watching the city lights blur through unshed tears, wondering if healing meant learning how to miss someone without falling apart. Wondering if Cole ever slept through the night now. If he still read my letter. If he hated me for leaving—or understood why I had to.
I was painting again. Sleeping more. Eating without forcing myself.
I was healing.
But love doesn’t disappear just because you survive.
And no matter how far I ran, no matter how many colors I learned to mix or mornings I woke up steady, he followed me into my dreams—soft, unresolved, and painfully real.
Maybe healing wasn’t about forgetting.
Maybe it was about learning how to carry the ache without letting it kill you.

I didn’t notice when the nights started getting quieter.
It wasn’t sudden. Healing never is. It came in fragments—small mercies I almost missed. One night, I realized I had slept for five hours straight without waking up drenched in fear. Another morning, I woke up and my first thought wasn’t about escaping my own body. It was about light—how the sun slipped through the thin curtains of my studio apartment here in Italy, pale and gentle, like it didn’t want to scare me away.
I started painting again without ceremony.
No big declarations. No dramatic moment where I “found myself.” I just picked up a brush one afternoon because my hands were shaking and I didn’t know what else to do with them. The first canvas stayed blank for a long time. I stared at it, breathing in and out, letting myself exist without demanding anything more. When color finally came, it wasn’t beautiful. It was raw. Uneven. Angry in places. Soft in others. But it was honest—and that felt like enough.
The people I met here didn’t ask too many questions. They didn’t need my whole story to sit beside me while I worked, or to offer coffee when they saw my eyes were too tired. They talked about art, about food, about places I hadn’t seen yet. Sometimes I joined in. Sometimes I didn’t. They let me be quiet without making it feel like a flaw.
The nightmares loosened their grip, little by little. I stopped waking up gasping for air. I stopped bracing myself for memories the moment I closed my eyes. Sleep became something neutral. Sometimes even kind.
But Cole never left my dreams.
He shows up in small, ordinary ways. Leaning against a doorway. Sitting beside me without speaking. Laughing softly at something I almost remember. In those dreams, there’s no fighting. No lies. No chaos. Just the weight of his presence, familiar and unbearable all at once.
I wake up with my chest aching—not the sharp pain from before, but something duller. Quieter. Like a bruise that’s healing but still tender when touched.
There are days I can say his name without breaking. Days I can think of home without feeling like I’m drowning. And there are days when I stand in the middle of my studio, paint on my fingers, and feel the old sadness curl back into my ribs like it never left.
But I don’t run from it anymore.
I let it pass through me. I sit with it. I remind myself that surviving doesn’t have to be loud. That choosing to stay—choosing to wake up, to paint, to breathe—is already an act of courage.
I am not whole yet. I don’t pretend to be.
But I am here.
And for the first time in a long while, that feels like something I can build on.

I dreamed of him the way I always do now—soft, almost merciful.
Cole was smiling. Not the careful smile he learned over the years, but the old one. The reckless one. We were standing somewhere bright, washed in afternoon light, the kind that makes everything look forgiven. He was wearing a suit, slightly rumpled at the sleeves, like he’d been tugged into it last minute. I was laughing—actually laughing—and for a moment, I didn’t question why my chest felt light, why my hands weren’t shaking.
People were clapping. Someone was crying happy tears. There were flowers everywhere, white and green, familiar and safe.
It felt like a wedding.
It felt like ours.
He reached for me, fingers warm, grounding. When he said my name, it sounded like a promise that never broke. I wanted to stay there. I wanted to press my forehead to his and freeze the moment before it could be taken away.
Then the dream shifted—like someone tilted the world too fast.
The light flickered. The laughter thinned out, stretched, distorted. Faces blurred. Cole’s hand slipped from mine, not violently, just… quietly. I tried to follow him, but my feet wouldn’t move. My dress felt heavy. The air thickened.
Suddenly I was alone.
The flowers darkened at the edges, petals wilting in real time. The room emptied without sound, leaving echoes that didn’t belong to me. I looked down, confused, my hands unfamiliar—trembling, slick with fear I couldn’t name.
There was something cold in my grip.
Metallic. Final.
I didn’t know how it got there. I only knew my heart was pounding so hard it hurt, like it was trying to escape before the dream finished what it started. Somewhere, there was shouting—but muffled, distant, like underwater noise. Then red—too much of it, blooming where it shouldn’t, soaking into the floor, into my vision.
Not clear. Never clear.
Just flashes. Panic. The unbearable weight of this is my fault crushing down on my ribs.
I tried to scream Cole’s name, but my mouth wouldn’t open.
And then—
I woke up.
Gasping. Crying. My body curled in on itself like it was bracing for impact that never came. My sheets were twisted around my legs, damp with sweat. My hands were empty, shaking so badly I had to clutch my own arms just to feel real.
“It’s not real,” I whispered, over and over, like a spell. “It’s not real. It’s not real.”
But my chest didn’t believe me.
I pressed my face into the pillow and sobbed—quiet at first, then breaking, ugly, desperate. The kind of crying that comes from somewhere older than thought. Somewhere buried.
Because even awake, even safe, the feeling stayed.
The happiness.
The loss.
The terror of how quickly love can turn into ruin.
And worst of all—how part of me still reached for him in the dark, knowing he wouldn’t be there.