Maybe I’m Not Giving Up. Maybe I’m Letting Go.

Some days I sit still and wonder if I’m done fighting.

Not because I’ve stopped caring, but because the caring has started to crush me.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about escape. About leaving. About seeking peace. At my core, I am an immigrant. I left a country I loved because of violence, because safety and opportunity were out of reach. I have always been seeking peace, joy, life. Don’t we all deserve that?

It’s hard to describe the grief of believing in change and watching everything around us fall apart. The people and leaders we admired folding easily into the status quo. The companies we thought were inclusive quietly going through the motions. And the politicians we trusted with our rights voting against us, prioritizing their own interests over our lives.

I am watching my own community be persecuted like animals. Stripped of rights. Targeted through racial profiling. Stalked by both official agencies and vigilante impersonators. Who gets to decide who deserves to live here?

I keep wondering. How can there be so much hate in someone’s heart?
What happened to them?
Were they unloved?
Were they abused, neglected, abandoned?
Do they now believe that hurting others will somehow heal their own pain?

I am struggling.
Struggling to understand what I’m witnessing.
Struggling with the depth of hate toward people who simply eat differently, speak differently, love differently.
I’m struggling to believe that change will come soon enough to save us from the path we’re on.

What does it mean to stand up against injustice now?
Is it being loud? Is it putting your loved ones in danger?
Is it simply daring to exist in your skin?

I’ve been wondering what if I walk away from the fight, not out of apathy, but out of love?

What if I choose to live in peace, to prioritize the immense love I carry, to center the one thing that still keeps me moving—my family?

Is that wrong?

Is joy a betrayal or could it be a reclamation?

Could existing fully, unapologetically, joyfully be its own form of resistance?

I feel broken.
Hopeless, in a system that keeps demanding more struggle while feeding a capitalist machine that values profit over humanity.

I used to think purpose meant always moving. Always fixing. Always holding the pain of the world.
But what if purpose is also choosing to feel the sun on my face?

What if I don’t need to perform my grief for a world that only honors us when we’re hurting?

I don’t have answers.
Just a sunny day where my soul feels like rain.
Maybe I’m not giving up.
Maybe I’m letting go.

And maybe just maybe claiming my joy and peace isn’t an exit from the work.
It’s how I survive it.