I write for the one who used to draw stars in the margins,
Who believed wishes belonged to anyone brave enough to ask.
I speak for the voice that once got quiet—
Not because it had nothing to say,
But because the world got loud.

I wake up, not for the grind,
But for the chance to keep a promise:
To never abandon that small, soft dreamer
Still curled inside me,
Waiting to be heard.

Body:

> Calm wasn’t gifted to me. It was carved.
Each version of me that begged to be enough had to be laid to rest.
I buried my impulsive self.
My always-performing self.
The people-pleaser.
The panicked one.
Not in hate, but in gratitude—because they tried their best to survive.
But peace can’t be carried by hands always shaking.

Calm is not passive.
It is active.
It’s built from endings.

— Ashen Kaid

By: Ashen Kaid

> I have murdered the noise inside me—
not with violence,
but with surrender.
The version who shouted for love,
the one who ran from silence,
and the one who begged to be seen—
they all died gently,
each time I chose stillness
over spectacle.
Now, when I breathe,
it's not for attention—
it's for oxygen.
This peace you see?
It’s not softness.
It’s a graveyard
of every version of me
who wasn’t ready
to carry peace.

Body:

> There’s a kind of silence that isn’t born from serenity but from survival. That’s the silence I’ve come to know—the one you only earn by walking away from the parts of yourself that made too much noise to live with.

I’ve buried so many versions of myself that I sometimes forget which one first learned to cry, to rage, to lie still. But I remember this: none of them were wasted. They brought me here.

Today’s version of me does not panic at the thought of stillness. It does not flinch when things are slow. It no longer needs to prove anything to anyone—not even to me.

This calm I wear was never gifted. It was crafted through grief, through letting go, through shedding skins I once thought were mine for life.

Maybe that’s the lesson: we don’t find peace—we shape it, by ending what no longer belongs.

— Ashen Kaid

By Ashen Kaid

> I have killed so many versions of me
that I’ve forgotten who smiled first.
But each silence, each retreat,
was a grave I had to dig
so that peace could sit beside me.

Call it calm.
Call it survival.

But know this—
I did not become soft by chance.
I earned this quiet
with a thousand inner funerals.

Body:

> I used to think I had to carry everyone with me.
That love meant weight. That staying loyal meant staying small.

But then I learned the truth:
To fly high, you must lose what holds you down.
And sometimes, that means people.

Not out of malice.
But because they can’t breathe where you’re going.
They need a different sky.
And so do you.

Letting go is not cruelty. It’s clarity.
And sometimes, the only way to rise is alone.

— Ashen Kaid