THE ONES INSIDE

"The Ones Inside"

It started in the rain. Typical, right? Every good epiphany begins with water, a gray sky, and me dramatically staring at nothing. But this wasn’t just your average drizzle. It was the kind of rain that sneaks under your collar and makes your soul feel soggy. I wasn’t sad, exactly. I wasn’t mad. I just... felt something rumbling deep in my chest. Like a baby dragon demanding attention. Not quite pain. Not quite hunger. Just... something.

So I walked. Right through puddles. Past my usual shortcuts. Into a neighborhood I didn’t recognize.

That’s when I heard them.

Not voices, exactly—more like the hush of pages flipping themselves. Poems being whispered by a wind that smelled like cinnamon and ozone. They didn’t ask for money. Or followers. Just one thing:

"Speak our names."

I would’ve ignored them—chalked it up to low blood sugar or too many graphic novels—but then I saw them.

Symbols. Like constellations drawn with sidewalk chalk. Like hieroglyphs scribbled on fences. Each one glowed faintly when I looked at it, and faded when I blinked.

Inside me, things stirred.

It wasn’t scary. It was... like finding a flashlight in the dark and remembering you packed it. That feeling.

I wasn’t alone in here.

There was the Poet, always weaving metaphors from broken thoughts. The Warrior, who didn’t care about trophies, just meaning. The Wholeness Geek (I don’t name ‘em, they named themselves) who constantly whispered, “Be all of who you are, even the weird bits.”

And Platinum Jesus. Not the churchy one. He wore boots and had laugh lines and smelled faintly of pancakes and motor oil. He never judged. Just walked beside me and kicked away anything trying to trip me up.

They didn’t march in line. They danced. Spun. Collided. Made messes and masterpieces in the halls of my mind.

And when I felt lost, or dry, or crushed by the weight of being A Person, they lit up like stars.

They weren’t asking me to become something new. They were begging me to remember.

By the end of my walk, I’d traced all the symbols into a single phrase scratched into the wet dirt with a stick:

"You are already whole. You just forgot."

I laughed. Out loud. Which made a dog bark and a neighbor glare. Worth it.

The rain stopped. The ache eased. And those voices, those glowing fragments of myself—they didn’t vanish.

They were home. Inside me. Loud and brilliant and gloriously weird.