Sakura

The woman on my back took 4 months to fully form.

She stands beneath the delicate branches of cherry blossoms, dressed in the armor of a samurai, her swords resting at her sides. Her face is turned away, her posture quiet, almost contemplative. She is neither preparing for battle nor celebrating a victory.

She is simply standing.

And for reasons I am only beginning to understand, she is me.

I named her Sakura.

In Japanese culture, cherry blossoms symbolize the fleeting nature of life. They bloom spectacularly, unapologetically, and only briefly. Their beauty exists precisely because it cannot last forever.

I have spent much of my life resisting that very idea.

I have tried to preserve relationships long after they began to fracture. I have held tightly to people I feared losing, sometimes so tightly that I lost sight of myself. I have mistaken persistence for devotion, sacrifice for love, and the fear of abandonment for something resembling loyalty.

I have been a woman who fights.

For love. For family. For belonging. For the reassurance that I matter enough for someone to stay.

And somewhere along the way, I began to believe that if I stopped fighting, everything I loved would disappear.

But what if that isn't true?

What if the greatest act of courage isn't holding on?

What if it's opening my hands?

I don't want to spend the next chapter of my life waiting for someone to choose me. I want to choose a life that makes me curious about tomorrow.

I want to move somewhere unfamiliar. Walk streets where no one knows my history. Sit alone in a café without feeling lonely. Strike up conversations with strangers. Make new friends. Explore mountains and cities and places I've only imagined.

I want love without making myself responsible for whether someone stays.

I want to give people I love freedom to move toward me because they want to, not because I've exhausted myself trying to keep them close.

That doesn't mean I will love them less.

Perhaps it means I will finally learn to love without allowing fear to decide how tightly I hold on.

For much of my life, happiness has felt precarious. Something wonderful happens, and almost immediately, some small part of me begins wondering when it will end.

I anticipate the loss before I've even finished enjoying the moment.

And what a terrible way to experience something beautiful.

The cherry blossoms don't refuse to bloom because their petals will eventually fall.

They bloom anyway.

Maybe that's what Sakura has been trying to tell me.

Her armor isn't coming off. Her swords aren't being surrendered. Everything she's endured remains part of her.

But not every relationship is a battle. Not every silence is abandonment. Not every uncertainty is a warning that something terrible is about to happen.

And not everyone who walks away needs to be followed.

I spent so many years afraid of being left behind.

I wish I could say I've stopped being afraid. I haven't. But I'm beginning to understand that fear doesn't have to be the author of every decision I make.

I cannot pinpoint when I began confusing love with the responsibility of keeping it alive. Perhaps it happened gradually, through relationships that ended before I was ready, through silences I couldn't understand, through the peculiar loneliness of loving someone who was already halfway out the door.

Whatever its origins, the lesson stayed with me.

If I wanted love, I had to fight for it.

I am tired of fighting.

Not because the people I love aren't worth fighting for, but because somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that loving them meant never letting go.

I have replayed conversations, dissected silences, questioned my worth, and searched for reassurance in places where it should have been freely given. I have allowed another person's distance to consume an otherwise beautiful day. I have imagined endings before they happened and grieved losses that hadn't yet occurred.

And I hate admitting how much of my happiness I've surrendered to that fear.

The fear that someone will leave.

The fear that I won't be enough.

The fear that if I stop reaching, no one will reach back.

The last one is perhaps the hardest to admit.

Because what happens if I finally loosen my grip and discover that the only thing keeping someone close was my refusal to let go?

I don't know.

If I stop calling, stop reaching, stop trying to mend whatever has broken between us, what if the silence simply continues?

What if that is my answer?

And what if I'm not ready to hear it?

Perhaps that's why I hold on so tightly. Because as long as I'm the one keeping the connection alive, I never have to discover whether someone else would fight just as hard to keep me.

And that scares the hell out of me.

But I'm beginning to wonder whether living with that uncertainty might be less painful than spending the rest of my life trying to prevent it.

When imagining my life in Colorado, the excitement comes in waves.

So does the fear.

Some mornings, I can almost see my new life unfold before me. A home somewhere in the mountains. A place of my own. New friendships, unfamiliar streets, and the freedom to discover who I might become when I'm no longer defined by the life I've always known.

Other mornings, uncertainty finds me before I've even had my coffee.

I wonder whether I'll be lonely. Whether the people I love will still reach for me when I stop reaching quite so desperately for them. Whether I am brave enough to build a life that belongs entirely to me.

I will love deeply, but I will not cling.

I will welcome those who choose me, but will not beg them to stay. I will go where curiosity takes me, where beauty calls me, where life still has something extraordinary to offer.

I will not stop loving fiercely.

Because I want to experience what it feels like when someone loves me fiercely in return.

And for the first time, I will try not to mistake freedom for abandonment.

And perhaps that is what becoming really looks like.

Not the absence of fear, but the willingness to experience it without surrendering to it.

Sakura carries her swords because she knows what it means to fight.

But she is learning something new.

She doesn't have to fight her way into every beautiful thing.

Sometimes, she can simply walk toward it.

She faces forward.

Her past is behind her.

She is not the woman who has arrived.

She is the woman who is becoming.

And perhaps, for now, becoming is enough.