Chapter 3 SAGE
SAGE
Ihad tried so hard to leave Sanele behind. I thought if I drove fast enough, far enough, I could outrun it and outpace its suffocating grip, but I was wrong.
No matter how many miles I put between myself and that place, it followed.
It was there. Always there.
I tried to lie at first and tell myself I’d made it out. That I was actually free. That the ghosts of Sanele had been left behind in the smoke and shadows where they belonged. I fed myself that lie like it was oxygen, clinging to it because if I let go… I didn’t know what would be left.
But lies, no matter how tightly you hold them, start to rot from the inside out.
And soon enough, I felt it creeping back.
Settling into my bones with the cold inevitability of winter.
It wasn’t loud or sudden.
It was quiet and slow, like it was being patient. Like smoke slipping beneath a doorframe, curling through the air until it fills the whole house.
Sanele’s shadows weren’t something you could leave behind.
They clung to you, seeping into your clothes, your skin, your breath.
They didn’t scream. They whispered.
Always there. Always waiting.
People like to talk about trauma like it’s the worst part of the story, like the actual wound is the ending.
But they’re wrong.
The trauma itself, no matter how brutal, how violent, how gut-wrenching. isn’t the hardest part.
It’s what comes after.
The echoes that never stop when you beg them to.
The broken pieces scattered across the floor of your life, sharp and waiting for you to try and pick them up.
And you do. You always do.
Because there’s no one else to clean up the mess.
You gather them with trembling hands, knowing they won’t fit the way they used to. Knowing they’ll cut you as you try to rebuild.
And you tell yourself you’re fine, that you can handle it.
But then you realize you’ve still been bleeding the whole time.
And the weight of that realization doesn’t ease.
It presses down on your chest until every breath is a fight.
It creeps into your veins, a cold coil of despair that winds itself around your heart and waits—just waits—for the right moment to squeeze.
Since the day I left Sanele behind, I woke each morning drenched in cold sweat. My body jolting upright before I was even conscious of being awake, lungs heaving, as my breaths forced their way through my body.
My stomach twisted in knots I couldn’t undo.
And my mind—my mind was a nest of nightmares.
Except they weren’t just nightmares.
They were memories that followed me.
Invading every sleeping and waking moment, crawling under my skin, like something alive and starving wanting to eat me from the inside out.
Reminding me that the past isn’t a place you can leave.
It’s not a door you can lock.
It’s a scar and one that deepens with time.
I wanted to believe a fresh start was possible.
That time and distance could bury the past, could quiet the screaming.
But every time I looked in the mirror, I saw a stranger staring back.
A face I didn’t recognize.
A version of me that didn’t fit the story I was trying to tell myself.
I wanted time to heal me.
I needed it to.
But no matter how far I ran, I was still running from myself.
Every day felt like a constant balancing act.
I pieced myself together with shaking hands, careful not to breathe too hard in case everything collapsed.
I told myself that no one could see the cracks if I smiled just right and spoke just enough.
Maybe no one would notice.
Because I knew that with one slip, one misstep, one moment of weakness—I’d fall.
Straight back into the ruins of my past and I wasn’t sure I had it in me to crawl out again.
So, I kept my head down.
I kept busy.
I pretended.
Routine became my armor.
If I moved enough, worked enough, maybe I could stay ahead of it. Maybe I could even fool myself into thinking I wasn’t unraveling.
But that was a long shot, because every night, when the world quieted, I peeled off the mask and it was waiting for me again.
The memories. The fear. The shame.
It never left.
It just lurked beneath the surface, patiently awaiting.
By the third week, I found trails nearby my apartment complex. They were tucked just beyond town, winding through a forest that stretched as far as I could see.
I made a habit of walking those trails every morning, right after the nightmares spat me out of sleep and before the day had a chance to crush me beneath its weight.
It became my solitude.
The trees arched overhead like old sentinels, their branches knitting together into something that felt like protection. The river cut through the woods with a quiet murmur, its voice softer than my own thoughts and the sounds of the bird filled the spaces between with their song.
And for the first time in years, I felt…lighter.
Not whole but less broken.
Each step away from the past, felt like a quiet rebellion.
A middle finger raised against everything that had tried to bury me.
I didn’t know where the trail led.
I didn’t care.
Forward was enough.
Then, one morning, I found a small clearing
Hidden just beyond a bend in the path.
A meadow that looked like it had been painted onto the world by some gods I didn’t believe in. Wildflowers spilled over the earth in every riotous color imaginable—violet, gold, crimson, ivory.
Untamed and almost rebellious.
But alive.
The river glittered nearby, its surface catching the light in a way that made it look molten.
I stood there for a long time, just… staring.
It was too perfect. Too beautiful.
I half-expected it to vanish if I blinked.
For a moment, it felt like I’d stepped into another world entirely.
One untouched by the things that haunted me.
I sat by the riverbank, fingers drifting over the petals, tracing their softness as if they might ground me in something real. The water whispered against the shore, and since coming to Providence I felt something close to safe.
Not exactly safe, but close.
And close was enough.
So, I came back.
Every morning.
After the nightmares.
Before the day could catch up to me.
I came back.
I let the breeze skim over my skin, cool and soft.
I let the flowers fill my lungs with their sharp, sweet breath and lost myself in the stillness.
But still a heavy burden was there within me. Something that kept me from feeling completely safe.
Sitting there one morning, knees pulled to my chest, surrounded by beauty that shouldn’t have felt like a lie, I found myself asking—had I really left Sanele behind?
Or was it still stitched into my veins, stitched into my name, in ways I didn’t understand?
Was I free or was I just pretending?
The questions gnawed at me.
They circled like vultures waiting for me to fall still long enough for them to feast.
I wanted to believe something good had come from all of it.
That through the wreckage and the ruin, I had found this—a sanctuary.
In the wildflowers, the river, and trees.
Maybe I wasn’t fixed.
Maybe I never would be.
But maybe I wasn’t just surviving anymore.
Maybe I was starting to understand what it meant to live.
And perhaps, for now, that was enough.
The thought lingered, delicate and fragile, like a spider’s web swaying in a breeze.
Too easy to destroy.
Because deep down… I knew it was a lie.
A convenient story I told myself because the truth was too heavy to carry in daylight.
And because if I didn’t keep telling it, I might not keep going.
I leaned back, lying in the grass, the cool blades pressing against my skin. I stared up at the sky that was so vast it felt like I could fall into it and never hit bottom.
It was comforting and terrifying.
Just like everything else in my life.
I slipped on my headphones, scrolling through my playlist. The haunting chords spilled into my ears, weaving through me like a pulse I wasn’t sure was my own. The song echoed something I didn’t have words for.
Something I refused to face.
But it became my anchor and my burden.
A reminder of the lie I needed to survive the next day.
“I’m okay.”
I whispered it aloud.
A hollow mantra that I repeated it until it almost sounded true.
But it wasn’t.
And I didn’t know if it ever would be.