I wake at three in the morning without an alarm. Sometimes five, if sickness or exhaustion holds me down, but rarely longer. The world is closed and silent at that hour. Houses dark, roads empty, no one is watching. These hours belong to me, and I rise to meet them, even when my chest is heavy with disappointment. Maybe part of me allows this because I feel if I reject the call it will leave me. It has before and the emptiness i s unbearable.

Have you ever woken in the dark carrying a weight or desire you cannot name? If you have, then you know this rhythm. The stillness that feels knowing instead of peaceful. You know what it means to face yourself before the world stirs.

On the outside, I pass for composed. At times, even formal. But inside burns a fire that does not rest. Friends draw close, then drift away. Some say I am too much, others not enough, until I am left wondering what version of me is worth keeping.

The fire shifts without warning. Sometimes it is an engine that convinces me I can build worlds, tear down walls, recreate myself before sunrise. Other times it flattens me into stone, heavy and still. Between those extremes lives the oldest companion I know, the fear of letting people down.

If you live with that fear, you know how sharp it cuts. The rehearsed apologies, the phantom guilt, the way you condemn yourself for things you have not even done. It feels safer to prepare for disappointment than to risk giving someone hope.

This fire is not romantic. Not candlelit scribbles or the myth of the tortured genius. It is labor. Teeth brushed when the mind says no. A shower entered when the body feels like lead. Water swallowed when despair whispers it will not matter.

And maybe this sounds familiar. Maybe you too have built rituals not because they are pleasant, but because without them you unravel. Maybe you too have carried yourself through therapy, or long nights alone, or a discipline no one else will ever see. That is survival. That is no small thing.

Yet even out of fire comes a strange gift. Out of sleepless nights I carve stories. Out of despair I paint. Out of silence I write. My blood has become ink, my pain a lantern. Jung said the wound is the place where light enters, and I know this to be true. The very cut that split me open is also the door through which vision arrives.

This is the pattern of myth. Orpheus descending into the underworld. Inanna stripped of her crown before she can rise. Ariadne’s thread winding through the labyrinth. Every descent demands a cost, every shadow demands an offering. Yet in that descent, in that shadow, something sacred is revealed.

The wound you wanted erased is the wound that shaped you. The shadow you feared most was also the doorway to your sight.

I collapse. I retreat. I disappoint. That is real. But it is not the whole truth. The larger truth is that I rise again. I wake at three. I keep creating. I keep breathing. And maybe you do too. Maybe your torch is smaller, maybe your rituals are quiet, but they still count. They still matter.

I once believed I was cursed. Now I know I am cursed and gifted in the same breath. The fire that scorches me is the same fire that fuels me. It has scarred me and lit me. It has fractured me and given me vision.

And if you are here, still breathing, still rising after collapse, then you have survived yourself too. That is not small. That is everything.

Even broken. Even strange. Even flawed. We are still carrying fire through the labyrinth. And here is what matters most: the torch is not only mine, it is ours. The story is not only mine, it is yours. Every time one of us rises, we light the way for another.

This is not a confession. This is not a performance. This is an invitation. To recognize yourself in these words. To know that survival is not shameful, but sacred. To understand that your shadow is not the end of you, but the doorway through which your light escapes.

I have survived myself. That is my offering. And so have you. That is our victory.

We wake at three. We carry the fire. We walk the labyrinth. Alone, yet never alone. Broken, yet still mythic.

The Fire That Stays

Purple Inkwell Studios

The Fire That Stays

The Shadow’s Throne: How Myth Turns Suffering into Power

Purple Inkwell Studios