The new year didn’t arrive gently.
It came with reflection pressed against my throat—asking me to look at how far I’ve traveled, and how much of myself I misplaced along the way. It asked uncomfortable questions. It lingered in places I thought I had already closed the door on. And somewhere in that stillness, I understood something with brutal clarity:
Burnout is not a place I am willing to live in anymore. Not even on its outskirts. Not even while telling myself I can survive just a little longer there.
To step away from burnout means stepping back from the version of myself I once pushed relentlessly into the social media atmosphere. The constant presence. The performance. The quiet pressure to always be visible, always producing, always proving. It means letting go of the idea that I must write inside a box shaped by trends and algorithms and other people’s appetites.
It means writing wild again—like a bird shattering a cage, wings slicing through iron bars.
It means writing honest again—words clawing their way out of tight boxes, refusing to be contained.
It means writing like no one is watching—running through open fields of thought, untamed, unpoliced, free to fall, rise, and soar wherever the wind takes them.
Somewhere beneath the noise, I felt the ember I had neglected—small, stubborn, refusing to die. To find it again, I had to clear away the distractions. I had to stop feeding the fire with scraps and let it consume something real. I had to remember why I started writing in the first place.
The writing journey looks different for everyone. There is no single map. No universal destination. But what it means to be a writer? That truth is carved from personal history. It runs deeper than craft. Deeper than publication. Deeper than praise.
For me, the written word was a lifeline.
Pen to paper. The first lines of a sketch scrawled in the shadows. Words were the only thing keeping me alive when I was young—drowning behind locked doors, air stolen, voice clipped, body folded small to fit the cages around me. Silenced. Boxed. Trapped. Existing in a world that demanded I be seen but never heard.
Writing was where I could scream until my lungs tore, without sound.
Where I could exist fully, without asking permission.
Where no one could pry open my chest and steal the pieces I had fought to keep.
There is a particular kind of passion in the weave—the tapestry of words and poetry that lingers long after the breath leaves the body. The kind that clings to the ribs. That echoes in the hollow spaces. Writing, to me, is a pouring without witnesses. A thunderous waterfall crashing in the dark, unseen and unapplauded. No eyes. No ears. Just release.
And to hold that creation—to cup it gently in your palms and promise to protect it simply because it exists—that is what being a writer means to me. To nurture something not for consumption, not for performance, but because it deserved life the moment it was conceived.
To let it grow in its own time. Exactly where it was planted.
I don’t want to lose her again.
This year, I am choosing to bring her back to the forefront—the truest version of myself, the one who writes because she must. Social media has a way of trimming wings just enough to keep us contained, shaping us with invisible guidelines that whisper be palatable, be profitable, be quiet about the parts that make people uncomfortable.
And with the rise of Booktok, the noise has grown monstrous. More voices. More opinions. More hands from some hellish void, crawling out of the shadows, tearing at sleeves, digging into ribs, prying at the corners of our minds, adjusting our posture while we stand exposed on pedestals carved for judgment. Authors turned into spectacle. Art torn from its body and sold as commodity.
It’s like standing on a marionette’s stage, strings tangled around your limbs, but no one knows who is pulling. No one knows who is really watching—or if they were ever watching at all. Some hands only appeared to shove, to twist, to tug at your shoulders, and then vanished, leaving you dangling in the wind, suspended, forced to fall on your own. Each string a whisper of control, each tug a reminder that your body and your story aren’t entirely your own. You stumble, you sway, and the audience—or whatever passes for one—vanishes into shadows, leaving nothing but the echo of their interference.
Art should not be this. Art should not leave its creator bleeding from invisible claws.
Art should be planted. It should be nurtured. It should be given enough sunlight to stretch, to reach, to grow. Not ripped apart by invisible claws, torn limb from limb by judgment, left scattered and bleeding across the floor of public opinion. Art should be allowed to gather its shattered pieces, to press them back together, jagged edges and all, until it can reach again—until it can rise from the wreckage and stretch toward its own light, unashamed, untamed.
So this year, I am returning to the stories I get lost in. The ones that haunt me. The ones that refuse to stay quiet. The stories that needed to be told—not because there was a demand for them, but because my soul would not let them go.
This year, I want my readers to truly see me—for who I am—because I do not know how to be anyone else.
I am an introvert by survival. Life taught me that lesson early, hammered it into me with a spiked mallet every time I dared smile too brightly, every time I spoke too loudly, every time I dared to take up space or have the audacity to think I deserved a small spec of happiness. I learned to shrink. To fold inward. To wear my silence like armor.
And then I began to watch the Bookworld unfold—and in too many ways, it mirrored those old cages in real time with spikes facing inward, slowly closing in. The tugs, the whispers, the invisible hands that try to twist you into someone else’s shape. The judgment, the measuring, the subtle, insidious pressure that feels like it could fold you back into the same prison you once clawed your way out of with flesh barely intact.
The memories of those crimson pools linger, seared into my mind with the cold, cruel precision of mental photography… the blade long since cast aside.
But I am no longer that person. I have healed. I can see the shadows before they fully settle. I can feel when things are starting to tumble down that same road toward the same executioner. And now, I stand ready—not shrinking, not hiding—but aware, gathering my strength, holding myself together, and refusing to be folded into cages that no longer belong to me.
This is why I fight so desperately for others—the ones no one sees, the underdogs, the ones clinging to life by the thinnest of threads, unsure if they even want to see tomorrow. I have grown into a light tower for those lost in the dark, crying out in silence. And I am willing to face the cost of that light: to illuminate things that wish to remain hidden, to cast shadows back on me as if their exposure were my fault. Because if shining that light can help even one soul find their way out of the cage, I will bear the weight of the fire, the scrutiny, the blame—and still stand tall.
And perhaps these blog posts have become my confessionals—the thoughts I’ve always kept buried, locked away by old habits. The echoes of past voices, past partners, telling me I suffered in silence. Or perhaps the season has finally come for me to showcase exactly what God has brought me through, what He has cultivated me to be—to shine His light through me, even when it feels like the darkness wants to claw it back.
Because in Bookworld, it’s so easy to get lost in the vibes, the aesthetics, the curated perceptions… and not truly see the person behind the page at all.
I’ve always strived to be genuine. Always. But the beatings from Bookworld—the subtle cuts, the whispered judgments, the invisible hands pulling at strings—grew thorns of hesitation around my heart. No longer. God has pruned these branches of my soul, stripped away the dead weight, because He knew the fruit that could grow from the wounds. And with His help, I am reminding myself—daily—that it is okay to look up again.
To smile without fear of punishment. To laugh. To embrace joy.
It is okay to reach, to stretch trembling fingers toward the light. It is okay to try—and to risk everything—to touch the sun.
-YD
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