The Wilds Project.

I held peace like it was the air in my lungs.
I mistook the calm for foundation and trusted the quiet for safety. I believed that if I didn’t make waves, nothing would break.

But beneath what I could see the pressure was building.
And when it gave—it didn’t just take everything I loved.

It took me too.

What came out on the other side wasn’t the same woman who went under. 

This isn’t about collapse.
It’s about what gets born in the wreckage.

The Levee

A levee doesn’t stop the water from rising.
It just holds it back—quietly, relentlessly—
for as long as it can.

No applause.
No warning.

It’s not built to be noticed.
It’s built to endure.

To protect what matters.
To carry pressure no one else sees.
To hold the line between chaos and everything trying to survive behind it.

But pressure doesn’t care about purpose.
It builds anyway.
Inch by inch.
Moment by moment.

Until the silence cracks.
Until the ground gives way.
Until the weight splits it wide open.
And when that happens—
the break is fast.
And final.

And when the levee breaks, it doesn’t creak
or crack with warning.

It erupts.

What was calm becomes collapse.
What felt like protection becomes the very thing that destroys.

And afterward—
You’re left standing in mud,
soaked in silence,
trying to remember who you were before it broke.

But it’s gone.

You’re not the same.
You can’t be.
Because the thing that shattered
was the only thing holding you together.
The only thing holding back the flood.

And you can’t rebuild
with pieces you no longer have.

---

People love to praise survival.
They rarely mention what it costs.

I didn’t claw my way out of the flood untouched.

I came back sharper. Louder.
Not because I wanted to—
but because the “peace” was swallowing me whole.

We call it strength.
But it’s really transformation.

A resurrection.

When the levee broke.
I did too.

But what came out of that water
wasn’t the girl he conditioned me to be—
it was the wildfire he thought he drowned.
The one that would tear down hell itself before letting it take her daughters.

The part where hell met its match.