By Nicole K., Renascent Alumni

We just want to be anywhere but here. Not because we’re running—those days are behind us. The fear, the doubt, the weight of it all… it’s gone. We’re untethered, floating, weightless. Suspended between what was and what could be. The world stretches out below us, and for the first time, it doesn’t feel so small. It’s beautiful. It’s everything. And yet, it’s not enough.

We risk sanity for moments of temporary enlightenment, chasing the high of something bigger than ourselves. A pill, a line, a hit—whatever it takes to crack open the sky, to feel the universe breathe against our skin. We reach for the untouchable, knowing it’ll slip through our fingers but stretching anyway. The thoughts come fast, each one colliding into the next, erased before we can hold onto it.

But in this moment—this perfect, heart-shattering moment—we are love. We are movement. We are together. We dissolve into rhythm, flowing in unison, pulsing like the bassline of some song we barely remember. And I swear, I could live in this forever if the universe would just let me.

We want to belong everywhere, with everyone, without fear, without walls. Just harmony. Just peace. Just us.

We’re waving now. Not in departure, not in sorrow, but in surrender. Because in the end, that’s all we ever wanted—to feel this light, this whole, this happy.

But highs don’t last forever. The comedown is a slow-motion car crash, the impact stretched over days, weeks, years. The stars blur. The air thickens. We’re falling now, plummeting back into the gravity of the real world, our bodies heavy with everything we tried to leave behind.

And then—rock bottom. Darkness. Silence. A heartbeat. Ours. Still here. Still beating.

We crawl first, wreckage in our lungs, ghosts in our veins. The sky mocks us, distant and cold, the way it always does when you’ve touched it and lost it. But we keep moving. One breath, then another. One step, then another.

Maybe we’ll never fly like that again. Maybe we’ll spend forever reaching for something that isn’t there. But somehow, against every fucking odd, we survived. And maybe—just maybe—that means we were meant to.