I used to tease her for it—curling deeper under my blankets while she slept with the window cracked open to the cold night air. It made no sense to me back then. She never argued or tried to justify it, only gave that quiet smile and said, “Fresh air keeps the soul alive.” I thought it was just one of her quirks, something small and harmless.
It wasn’t until after she was gone that I began to understand what she really meant. Going through her journals, I found pieces of her I had never seen before. She wrote about nights when everything felt suffocating, when the weight of life pressed so heavily on her chest that breathing itself became a struggle. The walls around her—her worries, her fears, her circumstances—closed in until there seemed to be no space left at all. And on those nights, she would get up, walk to the window, and open it. No matter how cold it was, no matter how harsh the wind, she let it in.
For her, it wasn’t about comfort. It was about survival. The cold air was proof that something still existed beyond the pressure she felt inside—that the world was still wide, still moving, still alive. It was her way of reminding herself that she wasn’t trapped, even when everything in her mind told her otherwise.
After reading those pages, I stood in her room, holding onto the quiet she had left behind. I walked to the window and opened it the same way she used to. The cold rushed in instantly, sharp and biting, filling the space she once occupied. It stung my face, caught in my lungs, and for a moment, I understood the shock of it—the way it forces you to feel something real, something immediate.
It didn’t take away the grief. That stayed, heavy and familiar. But it shifted, just slightly. It gave it space. And in that space, I felt something else settle in—a quiet kind of strength, the kind she must have carried all along. Not loud, not dramatic, just steady and persistent.
That’s when it finally made sense. Hope isn’t always something grand or visible. Sometimes it’s as simple as opening a window when everything feels closed in. Sometimes it’s choosing to let in a little air, even when it hurts, just to remind yourself that there’s still something beyond the moment you’re in.
