Somewhere Between the Breach and the Body — Soft Rot / The Price of Pretending

April 15, 2025 11:41PM - April 18, 2025 13:51PM

Soft Rot

Hi. I don’t really know how to start this, except to say that I’m tired. Not just "didn’t get enough sleep" tired — more like soul-tired. The kind of tired where you sit in silence and hope something inside of you wakes back up.

Lately, I’ve been pretending a lot. Smiling at the right times, saying “I’m good!” when people ask, answering emails like I’m a machine instead of a person. And I don’t even think I realized how much I was pretending until I sat down just now and started typing. The mask is heavy, you know? It’s real heavy.

There’s this low hum of fear under everything lately — like I’m waiting for something to break, or maybe it already has and I’m just the last to notice. I keep asking myself, Is this just what being an adult is? Constantly holding it together with duct tape and good intentions?

And also, here’s the weirdest part: underneath all of that, I still have hope. I don’t even know where it’s coming from. I just… I want more. I want rest. I want to feel like I’m allowed to fall apart without the whole world crashing down with me. I want to believe that it’s okay to not be okay, and that not being okay doesn’t make me weak, or dramatic, or broken.

I’m writing this, I think, because I need to hear it from myself. That I’m still here. That I’m still trying. That showing up — even in this messy, trembling, unsure way — still counts.

Some days, I feel like I’m doing everything just enough to not fall behind. I’m replying to things. I’m showing up. I’m getting dressed most days. But I’m also zoning out mid-conversation, forgetting what I walked into the room for, and crying during toothpaste commercials.

Which, okay — maybe the dog did get adopted and that’s objectively beautiful; but also maybe I’m not okay.

I keep thinking about how everyone’s out there doing things. Running businesses. Raising kids. Writing books. Taking trips. Posting photos with glowing skin and open windows and plates of food that don’t look like cereal at 9 p.m. I’m here trying to remember if I paid that one bill or if that weird noise in my car is a metaphor.¹

There’s this version of me I keep hoping I’ll “get back to.” The one who was energized. Clear-headed. Motivated. The one who didn’t second-guess every decision or feel like the ground might just disappear under her feet some days. But maybe that version is gone. Or maybe she was never really real, just a highlight reel stitched together from better lighting and fewer breakdowns.

I think that’s the scariest part: not knowing what’s normal anymore. Like, is it normal to be this overwhelmed by existing? Is it normal to feel like you’re too much and not enough in the same breath? Is it normal to look in the mirror and not recognize the person blinking back?

And still. Still. I want to believe in softness. In resilience. In mornings that start slow and coffee that tastes like hope. I want to believe I’m allowed to be this version of me — unfiltered, unraveled, unsure — and still be worthy of love. Of belonging. Of good things.²

Because maybe surviving is enough. Maybe telling the truth is enough. Maybe this — this messy, footnote-riddled post — is the most honest thing I’ve done all month.

I used to think if I could just figure it out — the right system, the right routine, the right number of steps in my skincare — then everything would click. That peace was some kind of prize you won after optimizing your calendar and drinking enough water.

Spoiler: I am very hydrated and still feel like a disaster.

I think I’m grieving something I can’t quite name. Not a person. Not a place. But maybe a version of the future I thought I’d be living by now. The imagined life I kept dragging behind me like a blueprint I forgot how to read.

Is it normal to outgrow your own dreams?

Sometimes I catch myself fantasizing about starting over. Just—poof. New city. New name. No unread emails. No mental clutter. Just wide-open mornings and a sense of possibility. But then I realize: I’d still be me. I’d still bring my overthinking, my fears, my stuff.

So maybe it’s not the location that needs to change. Maybe it’s the way I talk to myself.

I don’t know how to be gentle with me. I know how to push through. I know how to carry things. I know how to be “fine.” But gentleness? Grace? That’s a language I’m still learning. And damn, it’s hard.³

And yet. I'm here, aren't I? Still choosing to try. Still showing up in this small, quiet way — by putting words to a feeling I’d much rather bury. That counts for something. I think it has to count for something.

I want to believe it does.⁴ 

I used to think I had to earn rest. Like I needed to cross some invisible finish line before I could sit down and breathe. But the finish line kept moving. Every time I got close, it shifted a little farther away, whispering, just one more thing. And I believed it. I kept running. 

Even when my body said stop. Even when my mind was unraveling like a thread pulled too tight. Even when all I wanted was to lie on the floor and feel something that didn’t hurt. I’ve gotten really good at disappearing without anyone noticing. Smiling with my eyes empty. Responding quickly so no one worries. Posting something light so people assume I’m fine. But inside, it’s loud. It’s chaos.

And I’m so tired of hiding in plain sight.

Somewhere along the way, I picked up this idea that I’m only lovable when I’m useful. That my worth is measured in output, or helpfulness, or how easy I am to be around. I don’t even know where that started. But it’s sunk deep. Like a root wrapped around my ribs. I want to start unlearning it. Slowly. Gently. Like peeling back armor that used to keep me safe, but now just keeps me small.

I want to ask for help without apologizing. I want to rest without guilt. I want to take up space — not with noise or hustle, but with presence. With breath. With truth. I don’t want to perform my way through life anymore. I want to live it. Even if it’s messy. Even if it’s slow. Even if some days, all I do is survive.

That still counts. I still count.⁵

And maybe — just maybe — someone out there needed to hear this. Maybe someone else is sitting in the dark, holding their breath, wondering if anyone sees them.

I do. I see you. I’m right here too.

Okay. Here it is.

I think I’m afraid that if I stop performing, if I stop being useful, pleasant, agreeable, people will leave. Not in a dramatic, movie-ending kind of way. Just slowly. Quietly. Like a room emptying out. Like silence settling in. Dust sitting down. I’m scared of being forgotten. Of being too much. Of not being enough. Of being nothing at all. All at the same time. How?

And it’s not just a fear, it’s a pattern. I’ve watched it happen. I’ve watched people drift when I wasn’t their favorite version of me. I’ve felt love shrink when I stopped shape-shifting. When I dared to say “I’m not okay.” It’s made me so good at editing myself down to the version that takes up the least amount of space.

That’s the rot. The belief that I am only valuable when I’m convenient. That love is earned by performance. That my pain is a burden. That honesty is too loud. That needs are too messy. That my real self is too much to hold. And because of that, I’ve taught myself to pre-abandon. I back away first. I detach. I ghost my own needs. I lower my expectations so no one else has to. I rehearse being left so the real thing doesn’t hurt as much.

But spoiler: it still hurts.

And what no one tells you about this kind of survival is that it works. It works. You stay safe. You stay small. You avoid disappointment. But you also start to disappear. You start forgetting what you even sound like when you’re not trying to please.

And now I don’t always recognize myself. Not in the mirror. Not in my voice. Not in the way I move through the world with carefulness instead of conviction. I want to burn the script I’ve been handed — the one that says “Be palatable. Be useful. Be fine.”

I want to write a new one that says:

Be honest. Be human. Be here. Even if they leave. Even if it’s messy. Even if I’m scared the whole time.⁶

The hardest part is knowing that I’ve done this to myself, too. Not just other people. Me. I’ve abandoned me. Over and over. Silenced myself when I needed to scream. Belittled my pain because someone else had it worse. Laughed when I wanted to cry. Said “it’s fine” so many times that the words feel like poison now. I’ve become fluent in self-betrayal. I know how to invalidate my own feelings before anyone else gets the chance. I know how to say “I don’t need anything” even when I am starving for care. I know how to ghost the parts of me that are inconvenient — the messy parts, the loud parts, the hurting parts — and pretend I am whole.

But I’m not whole. I’m cracked in places I can’t reach. And some days it feels like I’m rotting from the inside out — not in a melodramatic way, but in a quiet, invisible way. Like mold growing under the wallpaper. Like something you don’t notice until it’s everywhere. I’m scared that if people saw the real me — the whole, unedited, unfiltered me — they’d walk away. 

Not out of cruelty. Just confusion. Discomfort. Like, “oh, I didn’t know you were that sad.” And what do you even say to that?

Neither did I.⁷

There’s no redemption arc here. Not today. There’s no tidy wrap-up, no clarity, no sudden sunrise. There’s just this. The raw, unfinished truth of it all:

I am not okay. And I’m done pretending I am.

Sometimes I catch myself fantasizing about subtraction — not in a minimalist Pinterest-board kind of way, but in a desperate please-make-it-quiet way. I want fewer tabs open, fewer expectations, fewer demands to be on. I crave space. I crave silence that feels like peace instead of loneliness. I want to do less and feel more. More rooms to enter into with less sneers, less taunts, less sighs. But here’s the catch: at the very moment I’m craving less, I need more (of something else). More reassurance. More softness. More love without performance. More care I don’t have to earn. And isn’t that the paradox? I’m shrinking everything down just to make room for what I’m scared to ask for.⁸

There was a time when I loved being alone. It felt like freedom. A choice. Now it feels more like absence. Like everyone else left the party and I’m still cleaning up, unsure if they’ll come back or if they were ever really here for me in the first place. I don’t know when solitude turned into exile, but I miss the version of me that found comfort in her own company.⁹

I’m tired of being congratulated for coping. For pushing through. For showing up when I’m crumbling inside. There’s this strange praise people give — “Wow, you’re handling so much!”¹⁰ — and it always feels like a compliment wrapped around a cry for help. Like I’m being rewarded for performing wellness while actively falling apart. I don’t want to be resilient today. I want to be soft. Fragile. Unremarkable. I want to exist without being strong all the time.

There’s a fire under this fog. I don’t show it often — it doesn’t look pretty in Instagram captions or Zoom meetings. But it’s there. A deep, guttural frustration at how much I’ve had to endure while smiling. How much I’ve sacrificed for the sake of “not making things harder for anyone else.”¹¹

And I am angry. Angry that I was told to be nice instead of honest. Angry that burnout is treated like a badge instead of a warning sign. Angry that asking for less is seen as laziness and wanting more is seen as greed. And yet — even in the middle of this emotional graveyard — something keeps blooming. It’s not loud. It’s not dramatic. It’s more like a flicker. A whisper. That maybe tomorrow could feel different. That maybe I’m not beyond repair. That maybe something good could still find me, even now. Even here. Hope isn’t a clean thing. Nor soft.¹² It’s messy and suspicious and often shows up in disguise. But it’s here. And I’m learning to let it stay.

I don’t know what version of me will read this months or years from now. I don’t know if she’ll still be tired, done, waiting for the end or if she’ll be lighter, freer, whole or if she'll be she anymore in ways I can’t imagine yet. But I hope she’s proud of me. Of this. Of the trying. Of the truth. I hope she looks back and whispers, “You didn’t give up. Even when it would’ve been easier.”¹³ There you go, that's the hope. The cyclical hope. Hoping for misery (of the future) to disappear while stewing in misery (of the present). Could there be a more Miseria ending?

The Price of Pretending

And now, there’s this new weight — not just emotional, but economic. A slow, creeping violence that wears a suit and calls itself a delay. My salary’s late. Again. And again.¹⁴ And what begins as frustration calcifies into fear. Into guilt. Into the shame of needing what you’ve earned and being made to feel like asking for it is rude. Aggressive. Ungrateful.

Every email I draft to HR feels like an apology. Every sentence is padded in “just checking in” and “kindly requesting” and “if you could please.”¹⁵ As if I’m not fighting for my own livelihood but begging for crumbs. My fingertips are laced with guilt ink, trembling between professionalism and desperation.¹⁶

This is economic abuse with a polite face.¹⁷ It doesn’t scream. It doesn’t hit. But it erodes. Quietly. It makes you question your worth. It makes you doubt your right to stability. It forces you to live in a suspended state — a constant limbo of waiting, adjusting, shrinking.

It’s rapid and vapid, this cycle—when you work in the social sector, giving everything, day and night, for the good of society… and then, when you ask for what you’re owed—what you’ve earned—you’re made to feel like you’re committing a crime. Why?

Why is it that when we advocate for survivor-centric approaches, trauma-informed care, and rights-based systems,¹⁸ our work is praised, published, applauded, and passed around like sacred scripture? But when we demand the same principles within our own organizations—when we say, "treat us like humans, too"—suddenly we’re “ganging up”?

What else are we supposed to do? We have no money. All we have is each other.¹⁹ If we raise our voices together, it’s called rebellion. If we stay silent, it’s compliance.²⁰ Is suffering a requirement to prove our commitment? Is living in pain and overdrafts the currency we pay to access institutional empathy?

Or worse—is our pain their business model?²¹
Is our exhaustion the raw material they polish into reports and pitch decks for donors? Do our trauma-informed designs only matter when they’re outward-facing, never inward-lived?²²

Because it’s starting to feel like we’re not just holding space for others’ pain—we’re being bled for it. Wrung dry for "the cause," while we teach self-care we can't afford, and preach boundaries we’re punished for having.

Home? That sweet, supposed safety net? It turns into a trap the second I crack. The moment I fall apart, I know it’ll snap back and chew me whole — the judgments, the side-eyes, the suffocating “we’ve all had it worse” silence. So I swallow my truth and I budget in fear.

This isn’t just one bad month. This is a pattern that’s so familiar it feels etched in my DNA.²³ Things fall apart. They always do. They get so, so bad. And then maybe—maybe—they start to rise. But I’m tired of surviving the bad. This time, I don’t have the strength to carry the fall again. I want out.

I daydream about running away. Just leaving. Starting over somewhere with clean air and no emails and mornings that don’t begin in dread. I imagine it so vividly it hurts. And then I tuck the fantasy away like a bruise I can’t show. Another scar. No wound. No blood. Just absence.

Footnotes:

¹ It’s probably both. The sound is coming from the dashboard and my fear of failure. Cool cool cool.

² That part was hard to write. My fingers hesitated. But I’m leaving it in. Because I think someone else needs to hear it too.

³ My default setting is “Do better.” The idea of saying “You’re doing your best” makes me want to cry, which probably means I need to hear it more.

⁴ If you’re reading this and nodding along — hi. You’re not alone. I don’t know you, but I’m rooting for you like it’s my full-time job.

⁵ If you only brushed your teeth and scrolled aimlessly today, that’s still something. You’re still here. You’re still trying. That is not small.

⁶ What if the people who leave were never really holding me to begin with? What if the ones who stay — even when I’m raw and real and ruined — are the only ones who matter?

⁷ Grief isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s just not answering texts and forgetting how to be excited about anything.

⁸ Also, I’m not talking about Marie Kondo “sparking joy” minimalism. I mean the kind of minimalism where your nervous system stops playing the Jaws theme during every group chat notification.

⁹ There’s a difference between being alone and being forgotten. One feels like peace. The other feels like being erased in real time.

¹⁰ Yes, I showered. No, that doesn’t mean I’m emotionally stable. It just means I couldn’t handle one more thing smelling bad today.

¹¹ I want to punch the air every time someone says, “Just take a bubble bath.” Like yes, L, let me exfoliate my generational trauma.

¹² Hope is stubborn. Like a dandelion pushing through concrete. And I hate it for making me believe things could get better. But I also need it. Desperately.

¹³ Also, future-you is gonna be so grateful you kept these words. Even the messy ones. Especially the messy ones. She’s gonna look back and whisper, “Damn. Look at you. Still showing up.”

¹⁴ Yes, I’m aware rent doesn’t accept “emotional satisfaction” as payment. I checked. Repeatedly.

¹⁵ "Just follow up again?” Sure. Let me rephrase my trauma in Excel-friendly language one more time.

¹⁶ The only thing worse than writing a “salary delay” email is re-reading it to make sure I sound grateful enough to not be blacklisted.

¹⁷ If you're wondering what economic abuse looks like in nonprofits, it's often wearing a kurta, quoting Paulo Freire, and ghosting your invoice.

¹⁸ It's funny how “dignity” is always in the mission statement, just never in the payroll cycle.

¹⁹ For a sector built on empathy, we really know how to professionally gaslight our own.

²⁰ HR: “We hear you.”
Me: cool, can you pay me though?

²¹ They say “we’re all a family here.” If this is a family, it’s the kind that eats its young.

²² The real irony? Our trauma-informed workshops have better care models than our actual HR policies.

²³ I want a world where being paid on time isn’t seen as a privilege, but as the bare minimum.

P.S.: This footnote idea taken as an inspiration from Emily Moran Barwick. You can read her post, Hi. I'm Terrified, Creatively Constipated, and Existentially Angsty as Fuck. And I'm Judging Every Word of This Post. And It's Not What I Want It to Be. It is amazing, so amazing, that you will never come back to my blog. 

P.P.S.: If you made it this far, congratulations. You’ve survived my nervous system’s entire PowerPoint presentation. And, I know what you're thinking: "Honestly, this could’ve been an email. To your therapist. But here we are."

- Oizys.

Tonight, Like Some Nights

As I have grown closer to my mother, we have these fleeting, intense, packed-with-emotions conversations sometimes. It is so deep and one with the soul that it almost makes me nostalgic about a connection I never thought I hoped for. But almost every conversation is also followed by a nagging sadness because almost every conversation is about the familial adversities that we both are stuck in. The empathy is underlayer with the longing for a conversation about a moment of happiness that feels elusive to the bones. Every talk is an act of writing a sad poem on a dry night of loo. Every exchange feels like staring at own's wretched existence in the mirror. Every story of the past shared liquifies my insides. Curdles my gut. And, I can't help but shake one constant thought. The thought of living with these experiences for the rest of my life. Stuck to my skin like the sweat in the desert afternoon. Embedded in every benign act of randomly eating a bucket of ice cream in the middle of a lonely night. And yet, there’s a strange warmth in it. A bittersweetness that swells and contracts in my chest, like a storm that never fully breaks. It’s a warmth that lingers long after the conversation is over, like the trace of a smile you’re not sure you saw, but you feel it in the air. It’s as if we’ve both unlocked a door to a place we never thought we could reach, a place where pain and tenderness intertwine. Where silence is a soft hum, the only sound that resonates when the words fall away.

But then—always then—there’s the guilt, too. Guilt for even daring to feel anything close to peace in the same breath as the ache. Guilt for wishing, in some quiet corner of my mind, that the pain could be less. That we could just talk about anything else. But it is, and it isn’t, that simple. Each word spoken feels like it’s steeped in the years we both carry, wrapped tightly around our ribs, squeezing us from the inside. Each silence, too, is like a stretched thread of memory that won’t snap. And I wonder, sometimes, whether the weight will ever stop pressing on us, or if it’s simply become a part of us, like a shadow.

I catch myself wanting to say something comforting, something that will dissolve the tension in the room. But what words are there? What words exist to undo a lifetime of bruises that run deeper than skin? What soft promises can replace the unspoken fears that tether us together, even as we try to walk in opposite directions? Every conversation with her feels like a tug of war-between the present and the past. And I feel the pull. Oh, how I feel the pull.

But it’s the waiting, isn’t it? The waiting that gnaws. The waiting for some definitive moment when the storm breaks, when the clarity we crave lands like a rainstorm that washes the dust away. But it never does. So, we keep dancing with the storm. We move through the chaos. And we are the storm. I think about it—about the incessant thirst for something we can’t quite name. Maybe that’s it. The words never come because there’s no language for the longing to break free, to just once exist in a moment untouched by all that was before, by all that drips from the walls of our memories.

Instead, we speak, again and again, of the same old things. And each time, it’s like trying to catch the wind in my hands—slipping through, shifting with the seasons, always just out of reach.

There is a force. A force that has no name, but it is. It’s the thing that winds itself into the very fabric of every conversation, every glance shared, every quiet moment between us. It’s a cold current that runs through the veins of our shared history, like a curse that was passed down, unbidden and unwelcome. It has shaped our minds, our hearts, and our movements before we even understood what it was. And when I look at my mother, I do not simply see the woman who gave birth to me. No. She sees the extension of that force—woven into the lines of my mother’s face, pressed deep into her tired shoulders, sewn into the sorrowful arch of her hands. It’s a genetic inheritance. A chromosome etched with scars of a life lived under something: something larger, something oppressive, something that has crushed womanhood into a form so unrecognizable that even she no longer knows what it is to be her—the her that was once unburdened, free of a history that collapsed on itself.

And I, oh, how I long to see the woman—the woman—that my mother could have been, could have still been, if not for the weight of the world that was handed down to her, piece by piece until there was nothing left but the hollow shell of a woman. I wonder if my mother ever knew what it was like to laugh without caution, to love without the worry of breaking, to be soft without the fear of being broken. But those are questions that are always too much. Those are questions that cannot be asked, because who would answer them? Who would dare to speak of a womanhood that was forcibly twisted, torn apart, and remade into something survivalist—something that could only exist through sacrifice and silence?

I try. I try to find even the slightest trace of it—my mother’s womanhood—as if it were a secret hidden beneath the surface of a story never fully told. I look for cracks in the armour of my mother’s exterior, hoping that the essence of her—the one that was never allowed to blossom—would somehow slip through like water trickling through the tiniest fissure in a dam. I want to catch a glimpse of it. Just once. To feel the pulse of womanhood that is hers too, buried somewhere deep within my dear mother.

But the cracks are few, and those that do appear are thin and fragile, fading almost as soon as they appear. I chase them, hands trembling, desperate to catch something—anything—that will prove that my mother’s womanhood still exists somewhere inside her. Maybe in the way she hums while commanding, in the way, her eyes soften when they talk of their lost loved ones, or perhaps in the brief moments when she forgets to hide her tears. I hope that if I hold on long enough, I can peel back the layers of resignation and see it—just for a fleeting second. But what I see instead is a woman who no longer knows how to be anything other than what life has made her.

And so I fight it. I fight the thought. The thought of becoming her mother. The thought of inheriting the very same fate—the same shadow that hovers over our lives like a distant storm. I try not to think of it, but the pull is always there. I am always one breath away from it, one step from falling into that same cycle of survival, of becoming a woman who is nothing more than a reflection of what has been done to her, who is nothing more than a version of what she was told to be, and nothing else.

And yet—there is a relationship. A refusal to be shaped by the same hands that shaped my mother. But the fear is there, too, gnawing at me, making me wonder if all my attempts to break free will only result in me becoming the very thing I dread. It’s a haunting, and it will not let me go.

Nights like tonight are when the weight of it all becomes so heavy, so palpable, that the air itself feels thick with the tension of unspoken things. I lie awake, the moonlight spilling through the window, but the shadows still stretch long and narrow across my thoughts. I wonder—sometimes desperately—whether there is a place where the echoes of my mother’s life will fade, where I will not always hear the whisper of that same cold current running through my veins, always reminding me that the past is never truly past. I wonder if there’s a way to sever it—to cut the thread that binds me to a history she can neither escape nor fully embrace.

And yet, there is no escaping it. No severing the cord, because it exists in my skin, my bones, my breath. It exists in the subtle ways I hold my hands, the way my voice quivers when I speak of things I cannot forget, the way I stiffen when the world presses too hard. My mother’s history is my history now, inextricable, woven into the very fabric of my being, like an ancient song that I was born knowing the words to, even though I never asked to learn them. And so, there are moments, too, when I am not fighting against it—when she is not running—but instead, I am simply sitting in it. Silent, still, like the calm before a storm that never fully breaks.

There are days when the weight of that inheritance feels like a blanket that has been folded too tightly, too many times until it is impossible to shake it free. But then, there are the moments in between—the flickers of something soft, something tender—that remind her that she is not simply defined by the past. There are the cracks that reveal something else, something deeper than the scars of survival. There are the glimmers of light in my mother’s eyes when she speaks and the days before all the sorrow before the world had taken what it could and left them both with what remained. There is the warmth of her hand on my arm when the words fail us both, and we simply sit together in silence, not because we have nothing to say but because there is nothing more to be said. And in that silence, there is a tenderness, a recognition of shared grief, of something that can never be untangled from the knots of their lives.

And in those moments, I allow myself to soften just a little. To stop fighting for a future that doesn’t bear the same weight. To breathe, just for a moment, in the space between our shared silences. I let myself feel it—the warmth, the tenderness, the connection that exists between us, even when the storm is raging. For all the heaviness of our history, there is something undeniably real in this bond we share. Something fragile and beautiful, like the way a broken flower still manages to bloom.

But even as I allow myself this brief release, I know that the storm is never far behind. The weight of my mother’s life, my own inherited burdens, will sit there, just beneath the surface, like a tide that is constantly pulling at her. It will always tug at my edges, shape my thoughts, and seep into my dreams. And yet, I know—somewhere deep inside—that there is strength in this, too. Strength in the knowing that I carry both the pain and the possibility of something more, something beyond the confines of the past. There is strength in surviving, in standing firm against the pull of history, even if it feels like a losing battle some days.

Because there is something within me that refuses to be extinguished. Some stubborn flicker of hope, of defiance, that whispers even when everything else is quiet: you are not your mother. You are not just the sum of all the wounds that came before you. You are more than this.

But then, the pull comes again. The pull of that force. The pull of my mother’s history, my mother’s pain, my mother’s unspoken stories. The pull of becoming the woman who has survived everything, who has lived under the weight of the world’s cruelty and kept going. The pull of becoming the woman who holds it all inside, who carries the scars of every battle fought and lost, but still stands—still stands, even when everything else falls away.

I see it sometimes, in the curve of my own reflection. I see the trace of it in the way my fingers curl around the edges of my mother’s hand, the way her eyes flicker with a sadness I cannot name. I feels it, too, in the way my own shoulders have begun to curve under the weight of things I was never meant to carry. And I wonder, as I stares into the mirror of her own existence, whether this is my fate—to be forever caught between the echoes of the past and the desperate desire to escape it. To be forever searching for something that is both mine and not mine—something that I long to touch, to understand, to claim as my own.

But there is also something else—a quiet resilience, a soft, unwavering light—that refuses to be drowned by the weight of history. Something that whispers, even when everything else is heavy, that the storm will pass, even if it never fully breaks. Even if the words never come. Even if the past never lets go. You are still here.

And so, the dance continues. The storm swells, recedes, and swells again. I am caught between the past and the present, between the woman my mother was and the woman I am becoming. She is both at once—torn, pulled, stretched across time and space. But in my chest, there is a small, stubborn beat of something more—a reminder that even in the darkest of storms, there is always something worth holding on to. Even if that something is just the quiet belief that one day, the storm will finally, somehow, break.

And when it does, I will be there. I will be standing—undone, maybe, but also whole in a way that is my own.

On nights like tonight (and the past few nights passed), when the room is thick with the smell of aging walls and the soft hum of the world outside, I lie beside her mother, both of us caught in the stillness of a moment we don’t dare break. The air is heavy, like it knows something that neither of us can name. My eyes trace the outline of my mother’s face in the half-light, the way the lines have deepened over time, carved into her skin by years of carrying burdens no one should have to bear. And in those moments, in the weight of her gaze, the force—the unnamed force—seems to pulse, like a shadow cast long before their time.

I can feel it in the silence between them, like the ghost of a conversation that never fully formed. It wraps around us both, thickening the space until it’s almost suffocating, as if the past is pulling at them from all sides, refusing to let go. I try to breathe through it, but the weight of it—the inherited weight—presses against my ribs. It’s there, lodged in the creases of my chest, the way my mother’s exhaustion is so clearly her own now. The way the longing for something—anything—more, something other than this, grows with each passing night.

And I wish, then. I wish with a desperation that rattles my bones, that some tide would come—some great, merciless wave that would crash down on us both, sweeping away all the pain, all the history, all the things that bind us so tightly to each other. I wish for the force to be undone, for the unspoken bond to unravel, to dissolve into the night like sand slipping between fingers. I wish for an end. An end to the weight, to the heavy silence that we have both carried so long, the unbroken chain of survival and sacrifice that has kept us locked in this shared grief.

What would it be like to finally breathe free of this? To feel the warmth of the sun without the shadow of the past creeping over it? To live in a world where the past no longer demands so much of them—where the force does not wind its way into their every word, every glance, every touch?

But there is no tide, no great wave that will sweep it all away. I know that as soon as the thought forms, the impossible nature of it settles over me like a shroud. No tide will come to erase the weight. No wave will cleanse them of what has been handed down, generation to generation. They are bound to it, always.

And yet, there are nights like tonight when the longing for that impossible freedom is so fierce it burns—when I lie here beside my mother, not daring to speak, not daring to disturb the fragile quiet between us, and I ache for a life for me and my mother untouched by the force that binds us both. I ache for a future that isn’t a continuation of the past, for a world where I do not have to carry this same burden, the same history. But even as the ache swells within my chest, I knows that the past cannot be undone. The force cannot be undone.

It is a tide, in a way, but one that pulls us both under. One that keeps them from ever truly breathing free. And in that quiet, as the night stretches on, I lie there beside my mother who is softly snoring, feeling her exhaustion, the weight of it all pressing against my chest, the way the past is never far, always so close. And I wonder, just for a moment, if this is what it means to be tethered to something larger than yourself, something that stretches back through time, binding you to it in ways you cannot escape.

The force is not just a shadow, not just an inheritance. It is a stronghold—a prison built into the very bones of who we are. And on some nights like tonight, as I lie beside my mother, I feel the walls closing in, and I wish—just once—that it could all stop. That the weight could be lifted, even for a moment. That we could stand in the quiet, not as survivors of what has been done to them, but as women, as people, untethered from the past.

But there is no escape. There is no breaking the cycle. The force is too deeply embedded, too entrenched in the soil of their shared existence. And yet, even in the face of that, I keeps breathing, keep fighting, keep hoping that one day—maybe one day—it will be different. That the storm will pass. That the unspoken weight will be lifted, if only for a brief moment, so that they can feel the sun on their faces without the shadow of what has come before.

But tonight is not that night. Tonight, the force presses down on us both, and we lie here together, bound by the silence, the weight, and the yearning for something more that neither of us knows how to name. And in the quiet, I am left with the single, relentless thought: Will it ever end?

But even in that thought, there is a flicker. A faint, stubborn hope that refuses to go out.

But hope is an elusive evil, a trickster that dances just out of reach, teasing me with promises it cannot keep. It feasts on the wretchedness of our mother-daughter dance, gnawing at the edges of our connection, as if it were something to be grasped, something worth chasing. But the more I reach for it, the more it slips away, like sand caught between trembling fingers. It is not the kind of hope that heals or redeems—it is a shadow, an illusion that feeds off our shared suffering, luring us both into a cycle of longing for something that cannot exist. Not in this world. Not in the confines of this life that they are bound to, this life shaped and twisted by the hands of a patriarchal system that has never allowed us to simply be.

For in this system, hope is not a gift—it is a weapon. A tool of manipulation, wielded by the outside world, the masculinistic forces that shape everything from our identities to our realities. Hope tells us, “You can be more. You can rise above. You can transcend.” But these are lies. Hope whispers that freedom is possible, that we can one day escape the weight of our inherited history, escape the clutches of the force that defines our relationship. But in the end, it is only a mirage, a false promise that leaves us empty. The system that birthed us, that shaped us, that has taught us the art of survival in silence, does not offer hope. It offers compliance. It offers endurance, as though endurance were the greatest form of victory.

I see this, even in the quiet moments of connection with my mother. Hope, in its purest form, is the ultimate form of betrayal for women like us. For it teaches us to keep longing, to keep wishing, to keep fighting for a world that will never be ours. A world built on the backs of women like my mother, like me—women who have been reduced to nothing more than vessels of survival, vessels that carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, without ever being allowed to let it down.

The force that binds us, the one that has shaped our lives and our relationship, is no accident. It is the byproduct of a world that has systematically stolen from us—not just our bodies, but our stories, our futures, our right to exist without the burden of the past. And in that world, hope is merely a tool used to keep us shackled, to make us believe that something better is coming, that the tides will change, that there will be light after the storm.

But every time I dare to hope, I feel the weight of that truth pressing on my chest like a hand that will not lift. I feel my mother’s history coil around my own—every step my mother took in her shoes now feels like my own, every ache, every loss, every piece of my womanhood torn away to fit into a mold that was never meant to hold me. Hope, then, becomes a cruel reminder of what we can never have. It is a yearning for a future that the world will never grant us.

And yet, there are moments—those fragile, fleeting moments—when hope creeps back in. Like a soft breath against the skin, a whisper of a promise that maybe, just maybe, they are wrong. That maybe the world will change. That maybe I will not carry the same weight, will not be bound in the same ways. Maybe—just maybe—there could be a place for me, for my mother, outside the prison of this society. But I know better now. I know the game. I know that hope is not a ladder out of this pit—it is the very thing that keeps me falling deeper.

For the patriarchal world we live in will not release us. It does not want us to rise, to stand in our womanhood unapologetically. It only wants us to bend, to bow, to endure. And so, hope becomes a tool of compliance. A whisper that tells us that if we just try harder, if we hold on just a little longer, then we will be free. But I know better. There is no freedom in hope. There is only the weight of the chains that it keeps hidden in its promises.

The force that binds us will not be undone by a dream of something better. It will not be swayed by desire or longing. It is the product of generations of women who have been forced to bend to the will of the world, who have been conditioned to survive without ever being allowed to live.

And still, I lie beside my mother, the force pressing against my chest, the weight of the past always there, always close. And in that moment, there is no hope. Only the pull of a reality that cannot be escaped. Only the realization that we are both part of a machine, a system that is too large to defeat, too entrenched to dismantle. But even as the realization settles in, there is something else—something that stirs deep within me.

It is not hope, but something else—something that cannot be named. A quiet, soft, blurry fire, a defiance that burns even in the face of all the forces stacked against them. It is the last piece of our womanhood, the last piece of ourselves that the world has not yet stolen. And though it may not change anything in the world, it is enough. Enough to stand here, beside my mother, in the quiet, and know that we are still here.

Still alive. Still fighting, even if we are not yet free.

And perhaps that is the one truth the system, the force cannot take from us: the persistence of our existence, in spite of everything, is our resistance.

- Oizys.

P.S. - I know this entry is ridiculously long and intellectually redundant. The night is long too, and it won’t pass. So, I did not stop until my eyes dried up, and until my bile rose, and until the hands gave up.

Somewhere Between "Perfect Victim" and "Perfect Survivor"

I grew up in an environment where victimhood was a narrative that was not only recognized but emphasized. I was always told I wasn’t the victim—they were. Those around me wore their pain like badges, their suffering almost serving as proof of their existence, while I was encouraged to suppress mine, to push past it. I was taught that to be a victim was to be weak, to be incomplete. The word ‘survivor’ didn’t come into my world until much later, and when it did, it felt like a foreign label being shoved down my throat. It was politically correct, they said. It was stronger, better, the story you should tell the world—because survival, after all, is something we celebrate. But the word felt almost as constricting as ‘victim,’ as though it demanded a neatness, an end to the struggle. Yet, I was neither of these things—I wasn’t simply a victim of what happened to me, nor was I some perfect survivor whose wounds had been neatly tied up in a bow. The reality was far messier, a place where I had to unlearn the labels I’d been given, and find a language for my journey that felt truer to who I was becoming in the process.

There’s a place between perfect victim and perfect survivor—a grey area where identity is not so easily defined, and healing doesn’t follow a straight line.

You see, the perfect victim is the one whose pain is visible to everyone. The one whose suffering is clear, whose hurt is almost celebrated in its purity, because it fits into a narrative people can understand. It’s a story with a beginning, a middle, and a clear point of trauma—something you can hold, something you can point to and say, “This is where I broke.”

But what happens when you’re not just broken, but fragmented? What happens when the story isn’t that simple? The perfect victim is an image of raw, unhealed pain, and yet, some days, we crave to be seen through that lens—to be recognized in the depth of our wounds. There’s comfort in being understood, in being pitied or given space to grieve. It’s a place where you can simply exist in the aftermath, unburdened by expectation.

Then, there’s the perfect survivor. The one who has transcended, who wears the badge of resilience like armor. They’ve risen from the ashes, carried their scars with pride, and stand tall with an unshakable strength. The perfect survivor is admired, even revered, for their triumph over adversity, their ability to stand firm despite what they’ve been through. But even the survivor’s strength comes with its own kind of pressure. There’s an expectation of unrelenting perseverance, a belief that to survive is to be without fragility, without moments of doubt. But survival, real survival, is not a perfect thing. It is messy, it is uneven, and sometimes it feels like you're fighting against yourself more than the world.

And somewhere between those extremes, there’s the real story—the one that doesn't fit neatly into either box. It's the space where your wounds haven’t fully healed, but they’ve also started to form new contours. You’re still grieving, still healing, still broken, but you’re learning how to move forward with those broken pieces. You’re not the perfect victim, but you’re not yet the perfect survivor either. You’re somewhere in the middle, in the messy, uncomfortable, beautiful space of being both. And maybe, just maybe, that place is where true healing lies. There’s an odd sort of pressure when you exist between those extremes, isn’t there? It’s like being caught in the gravitational pull of two forces that constantly pull you in different directions, and you’re left suspended, not quite fitting into either. The world loves labels—victim and survivor—because they’re easy to digest. You can box someone in, define their entire experience with one word, and move on. But what about the middle ground, the in-between space where you aren’t fully one or the other? This space isn’t often talked about. It’s messy, uncomfortable, and real in a way that both perfect victimhood and perfect survival can’t quite capture. The middle is the raw, untold part of the story—the one where healing doesn’t mean perfection and survival doesn’t mean strength all the time. It's where you’re allowed to falter, allowed to fall apart, allowed to not have all the answers. In this space, you can feel the weight of your past pressing against your future, both pulling you in different directions. The trauma hasn’t entirely faded; it’s still there, like an invisible scar, sometimes deep and sometimes just a faint reminder. But that doesn’t mean you’re stuck in it. It just means you’re still living with it, navigating your way through the world with a complicated mix of wisdom and vulnerability. Sometimes you feel strong, other times weak. Sometimes you feel like you've come so far, and other times you feel like you're right back where you started.

There’s a fundamental tension in this space, isn't there? The space between "perfect victim" and "perfect survivor" is where the real conflict lies—the kind that doesn’t just affect how the world sees you, but how you see yourself. It’s where trauma isn’t just a momentary event; it’s something that reconfigures your entire sense of self, your identity. It’s where you carry the weight of everything that’s happened to you, but it’s not just about the trauma—it’s about who you are becoming in the wake of it. In this space, there’s a sense of unfinishedness—not in a bad way, but in a way that says, “I am still in process. I am still discovering the pieces of me I didn't know existed.” It's the place where every story of survival feels like it's only half-told. It’s the quietest paradox of all: you’ve survived, but not without deep scars, and yet, you’re not a perfect survivor because you're still carrying those scars. They're still part of you, and maybe they always will be. The idea that healing is some neat package of triumph over adversity is something the world tells us. But the truth is, healing doesn’t look like anything. It’s messy. It’s intangible. It’s both explosive and quiet. When you're in this in-between space, there’s a profound sense of reclamation that starts to surface. But that reclamation doesn’t necessarily feel like strength at first. It feels like vulnerability, like uncovering layers of yourself you were never ready to see. And that’s where the tension lives. You’re still holding on to a part of the "victim" you once were—the part that needs validation, the part that wants someone to acknowledge how deeply you’ve been hurt. You’re not ready to just let that go, because it’s your history. It’s your truth. And there’s no way to pretend it didn’t happen, no way to shut it down into a neat story of survival.

Because healing isn’t linear. It doesn’t look like a clear path from victimhood to survival—it’s a winding road with setbacks and progress in equal measure. It’s about accepting the complexity of who you are in all your contradictions: the parts of you that are still hurting, the parts of you that are still growing, and the parts of you that are already stronger than you think. Healing doesn’t happen in one great moment. It’s a process, a slow unfolding of layers that you didn’t even know were there. And those layers aren’t all neat or pretty. Some of them are jagged, some of them make you angry, and some of them make you laugh at how absurd life can feel. The journey is nonlinear. Some days you’ll feel like you’re climbing a mountain, only to wake up the next day feeling like you're buried under a pile of rubble. In this space between victim and survivor, you’re allowed to be a contradiction. You’re allowed to be strong and weak in the same breath, to carry both pain and joy without feeling like you have to choose. You don’t have to have it all figured out, and that’s where the magic happens—when you let go of the need to fit perfectly into a box, when you embrace the mess of who you are and who you’re becoming. You are the product of every experience, every moment, and every decision. And none of those moments exist in isolation. They all blend together, shaping you in ways that can’t be boiled down into something simple or neatly packaged.

- Oizys.

Can't Daydream While I Shit?

I have been wondering this for a while now. Been almost a year, since this thought has been swirling around inside my mind. I am a very dedicated daydreamer. No matter what, I can daydream forever. And, some more. Nothing can stop me. Except while I am on the can. I’ve pondered this too much now, you know. Why is it that the bathroom—the one place where the world outside your door seems so distant—becomes a no-go zone for daydreams? It's almost like an unspoken rule of the universe: Daydreaming? Sure. But not here.

I mean, think about it: most other places, your mind runs wild. You can drift into other realities while you're walking, doing dishes, or even sitting through an awful Zoom call. But the second you plant yourself on the throne, something shifts. Your mind, usually so free to wander, suddenly seems tethered to... well, bodily functions. It’s like your brain decides that the realm of the mundane must match the context of your current situation. You're supposed to be focused on the present moment—literally, the present moment.

There’s this paradox too, isn’t there? We’re trained to think of the bathroom as a "break" from everything. Time to relax, right? But relaxation doesn’t always mean daydreaming. It’s almost like your body needs to remind you that it's there, holding the reins for a while. And perhaps that's what blocks your mind from drifting into those fantastical spaces.

But maybe it's a deeper thing. Daydreaming requires a certain kind of creative energy, doesn't it? And when you’re on the can, it's like that energy is siphoned into something else—something more... primal. It’s almost like the act of doing one thing, like attending to your body, leaves little room for the mental chaos of imagination to unfold.

Or maybe, just maybe, the bathroom is the one place where you’re supposed to be here and now—your mind and body synchronized in a singular task. You can’t escape it, so you sit there, aware, instead of floating off into the clouds.

Then again, this doesn't stop me from trying. Maybe that’s the next frontier—daydreaming while I shit. And if anyone can do it, surely it’s the world-class daydreamers like us. Maybe the trick is to find that balance, to learn how to keep your mind wandering while being fully present in the moment.

More? Alright, let’s dive deeper into this. There’s something almost sacred about the act of daydreaming, isn’t there? It’s the ultimate escape—your brain goes off on its own little adventure, weaving stories, conjuring worlds, or just drifting into thoughts that are sometimes too random to even put into words. It’s like a mini-vacation for your mind, a place where anything is possible.

But when you’re on the toilet, it’s like the universe itself says, "No, no, not here." It's as if there’s a force field around that space, a gravitational pull that drags your brain into the Now, instead of letting it float off into the ethers. What is it about this place that blocks that natural flow of thoughts?

Maybe it’s the physicality of the act. You’re in it—the sensation is so immediate, so rooted in your body, that it demands your attention. The feeling of relief, the strange rhythm of it all—it’s like your body takes control and forces your mind to be in the moment. You can’t escape the awkwardness or the rush or the urgency, so your thoughts get stuck on it. Your body is screaming, “Hey, pay attention to me,” while your brain, your creative, drifting, free-thinking brain, is like, "But I was just about to go on an adventure!"

And yet, when you’re at your most vulnerable, when you're at your most exposed, there's still a part of you that craves that mental space. You want to break free, let your thoughts wander, and imagine, but it’s like the world is reminding you that this part of life is so simple, so... necessary. It’s a place of grounding, of routine, where the mind doesn’t need to do anything else but focus on the task at hand.

Perhaps there’s also something profound about the very idea that we try to escape even the most basic of moments. It’s like our minds, so full of distractions, are always chasing after the next thing—always thinking we should be doing more. But when you’re on the can, you’re not supposed to be doing more. You’re supposed to be doing less. And that’s what makes it such a struggle. Your mind is screaming for freedom, but the moment is telling you, “No, just sit here. Be still. Let this simple thing be enough.”

It’s the one place in life that doesn’t ask for your imagination. You can’t just let your mind wander off into fantasy when your body is literally reminding you to stay grounded. It almost feels like a betrayal of your true daydreaming nature. And yet, when you’re done, you’ve given your body exactly what it needed. Isn’t that a kind of mental release too, though?

Maybe we need to stop fighting it. Maybe the bathroom, this oddly mundane, yet intimate space, is trying to teach us something. It’s teaching us that it’s okay to be present sometimes. We don’t always need to be creating, imagining, or escaping into the fantasy world. Maybe there’s magic in letting go of the need to daydream in that particular moment and just... be. The daydreams will still be there when you finish.

Still, though… I’m not giving up entirely. I’m determined to find a way to daydream while I shit, even if I have to carve out a new form of daydreaming that can thrive in that space—one that doesn’t demand too much mental energy but still lets my mind roam free. Maybe it’s not about escaping the experience, but learning how to live in it while still finding a way to drift. A hybrid of the mundane and the marvelous. It could be the next frontier in my daydreaming journey.

Until then, I’ll keep wondering why the toilet is my only creative black hole. Maybe I just need to relax and let the daydreams sneak in, like they always do when I least expect them.

- Oizys.

My Hunger, My Starvation :: My Shame, My Salvation

My hunger was long dead. I remember. It was prolonged and deliberate. Died when I was a single digit. I killed it with my mother's hatred and father's anger. It took its time to depart, and I made sure it was silent. It whinged a little during the nights under the low lights. I remember how the hunger fought back, clawing and howling, begging to be fed. It had small, short-lived moments of victory. 

As I grew, the starvation anchored me. The emptiness kept me up. And with it, I killed my appetite. I thought that was victory. I received compliments too! The absence of hunger and indifference towards consumption felt like control, like I’d finally tamed the wild beast inside me. But now, when I eat—when I let the smallest morsel pass my lips—it’s not hunger that returns. It’s something worse. 

It’s shame.

I went out to eat today. The emptiness inside me opens like a vortex, and the food tumbles into it, disappearing before I even realise what I’m doing. There’s no pleasure, no satisfaction—just the raw act of filling a void that never truly fills. And after I finished, I could not help but notice how beastly it was. Reflected in the knife’s edge or the gloss of a spoon. My gut, crouching behind my ribs, its jaws smeared with shame. I looked around, and it’s like suddenly a different world, one where I’m an outsider. I am sat at the table, the empty plate in front of me a gaping wound. 

The act of eating. Mechanical and humiliating. Like I unlearned how to eat when I killed hunger.

I killed my hunger, but I didn’t bury it. I starved my appetite, but I didn’t forget how to consume. Now I devour like an animal, and when I’m done, all that remains is the shame. It seeps into my skin, into my breath, into the very air around me.

Maybe now, all that’s left is the hunger and the shame. And me, somewhere in between. Or, right in the core of the vortex.

I starve because I think it will save me. I eat because I’m still human. But when I do, I remember why I stopped. I don’t know how to stop this cycle. I starve. I eat. I am ashamed. I starve again.

- Oizys.

Nothing Changes... Ever

I am still me. I am still scared. Still anxious. Hesitant. Shrinkingly worried. Rattled by everything, even the sound of my own typing. Everything just ruffling my feathers. Trying to get under my skin. Do we ever change? Does anything ever change like it does in television? How that one tired crone sips some luxurious tea and becomes the picture of health, epitome of beauty. I am still constrained by my own crippling fear of what will happen tomorrow morning. It keeps me physically captured. I cannot seem to shake it off and stop over-apprehending it. Maybe, when I seek change, I hope it to happen on molecular levels. Changes not only big, but changes that are so small that they slip past our conscious mind, forging themselves into the glass sheet between who I am and who I could be. And, when I don't have that, I feel the same. Remain the same. Rot the same. Cry the same. Live the same. And, that is probably my worst fear. Not failing in an exam, not unable to find a job, not not being able to quit a toxic job. But, not being able to change my construct. It is the same bricks and I keep building the same house. The doors keep slamming. And, the windows never open. Nor, they close properly. And, no one comes and rings the bell. No one comes looking for me. The world outside moves on, indifferent to the house I keep rebuilding. I wonder if it knows I’m here, or if I’ve become invisible, hidden behind these walls of my own making. The rooms are always so quiet and the walls are always stickily closing in. The emptiness is heavy and all the boxes feel hollow—reminding me of all the words I never said, all the doors I never dared to walk through. It’s not that I don’t want someone to come. It’s that I don’t know how to let them in without showing them the cracks, the places where the foundation buckles under its own weight. It's not that I don't want someone to help me. It's that what if the rubble reveals nothing worth saving, what if they tear it all down and find there’s no blueprint for something better? So, I keep playing with the same bricks. I sleep the same lie. I wake up to the same lie. I know the truth: it’s not the house that traps me. It’s the fear of stepping outside. Fear of being homesick or... not being homesick. Fear of unlearning myself. Fear of altering my code. Of leaving these bricks behind and learning how to stand under the open sky: unshielded, vulnerable, alive.

- Oizys.

P.S.: I don't know if I am making sense. I actually cannot sleep because I am dreading every single day of this notice period, and I do not want to wake up tomorrow morning to log in again. And I wish I had someone to crib about this with, but since I pushed basically every single person away, far away, with all these stubborn bricks, this corner of the web is the only place I have. 

Baby Steps Towards The World Of Seclusion

We live in a world of constant buzzing and noise. We are constantly accessible and available. Within anyone's and everyone's reach. We have condensed and made our world available in a rectangle. But there are some people in small corners of this world who take the path less traveled and keep their solitude secured. In today's age, this might be a lifestyle unfathomable but surely many but a way of life some fancy. It does spark questions and conversations. Questions like "why" or "how".

I came across this thread of conversation some time ago on a website called Reddit. The post is called I haven't left my house in 6 years. Ask me anything.

The title alone was a paradox, a riddle wrapped in a conundrum. Six years indoors? In this paced age of perpetual motion? It felt like reading about a unicorn in a cityscape. As I desperately delved into the responses, I found myself both fascinated and envious. Here was someone who had crafted a sanctuary within four walls, a self-imposed exile that, to them, was a fortress of solitude. They spoke of routines, of online communities, of a life lived through screens and words, of purely themselves and no chaos. I couldn't help but envy the security they derived in their isolation. The certainty of their space, the control over their environment, the absence of the world's demands. It was a lifestyle that seemed to offer peace, a quiet rebellion against the chaos outside. And then, a pang of guilt. Was I romanticizing their unalloyed confinement? Was I overlooking the shadows that lurked in my solitude? The loneliness that whispered to me in the quiet hours, the yearning for human touch, the struggle to find purpose beyond the glow of a screen. I wondered if they ever felt like a bird with clipped wings, gazing out at the sky, wondering what it would be like to soar. Did they ever long for the unpredictability of the outside world, the messiness of human interaction, the thrill of stepping into the unknown? In my own life, I seek an idyllic balance—a dance between the comfort of my home and the call of the world beyond. I cherish the long moments of solitude but also secretly crave the connections that make life mutable from moments borrowed at the mercy of the breakage of the iteration of the loop by mortgaging my future self's sanity and standstill. They say, the true art lies not in choosing one over the other but in weaving them together? As I close my laptop, I reflect on the paradox of it all. The desire for security and the need for freedom. The comfort of the known and the allure of the unknown. The ricochet in between, that is life. Not before vigorously researching if I can find that person somewhere and talk to them about it. Which is rare. This urge to talk with relatability. Maybe the urge is coming from a place where a part of me is aware I will never find them, so I seek them. To remind myself that...

- Oizys.

Can I Teen At Twenty-Three?

The most reminiscing memory from my childhood was quietness. Non-existence of individuality. Remain similar to the crowd. Appear same as everyone. Ambiguity and questionings were a luxury. You don’t explore. You follow instructions. Once you start falling into set into instructions, you become quiet. Your mind is quiet. Because, you body just follows a set of rules. You stop thinking. No noise at all. No movements. 

I used to wonder, as I slowly shifted from a child into a something I couldn’t quite define, when did quietness become a state of being? When did silence move from being something external, something that belonged to the world around me, to something internal, something I had learned to carry with me like an old coat that I forgot was once too big, but now fits too snugly? Was this growth? Or just another rule added to the ever-growing list of instructions?

Somewhere along the line, the novelty of questions turned into an inconvenience. Curiosity was frowned upon because it didn’t fit the model. Why ask when you can just follow? The quietness seeped deeper, turning the mind into a kind of blank canvas, but without any paint, without any color. It wasn’t freedom. It was a vacuum. A stillness that meant you weren’t bothering anyone or, more honestly, yourself.

But then I turned twenty-three. And nothing changed. I was still a kind of ghost walking through life, only the noises I made didn’t seem to matter as much anymore. The whispers of uncertainty I had in childhood had somehow become the only thing I could hear. How strange, how bitterly odd it was to realize that the noise I had avoided all those years wasn’t some unwelcome disturbance. It was a part of me. The questions I had once ignored in favor of calm were now the only things left that felt real. And yet, no one seemed to want to answer them.

Am I supposed to “know” by now? Or am I just allowed to drift, be like the others, blend in, because nobody really expects much of twenty-three? Is this the time to find the perfect voice, the perfect job, the perfect relationship—because that’s what everyone says? The older I get, the less I’m sure. And yet, I still follow the rules. The noise still rings, but it’s not clear whether it’s my own or just the static of the world around me.

What does it mean to find yourself when you’ve been told for so long to stay quiet and still? Is the search for “individuality” just another set of instructions in disguise? The irony hits me sometimes: I spend so much time trying to figure out who I am, but perhaps I’m not supposed to figure it out at all. Maybe it's all just meant to be a constant question, without a neat, satisfying conclusion.

The funny thing is, I can see the outlines of others, living their lives in such defined ways, yet still, I feel... not like them. But, do I really feel? Or am I just playing another role, as I've been taught, just playing quiet like everyone else? The “how-to” manuals seem so appealing at first—until you realize they don’t actually tell you anything. They just offer illusions. Do I really believe them? Or do I just want to?

So here I am, twenty-three, still tangled in the same threads I was at ten. The same whispers. The same questions. Maybe I was meant to make peace with not knowing. But can you truly be at peace with a question you’re afraid to ask? I don’t know. I don’t even know if the asking will make a difference anymore. But maybe that’s the answer.

Or maybe not.

Maybe I’ll figure it out by twenty-four. Or maybe I’ll still be just as silent, just as confused, like a piece of quiet in a loud room, wondering if it’ll ever matter.

So, here I am, approaching twenty-four, and still trapped in the same perpetual spin of confusion. It’s almost like I’m stuck in an infinite loop of trying to “get it,” trying to feel like I’m doing life correctly, yet no matter how many times I rerun the script, I end up in the same place: wondering if I’m even supposed to have it figured out.

I hear all these stories from people around me—about their careers, their relationships, their plans—and it sounds so... certain. They talk like they know, and maybe they do. Maybe they’ve cracked it. Maybe they have it all neatly packaged in a box that says “THIS IS YOUR LIFE, AND IT MAKES SENSE.” I think that's the dream. A life that feels like a straight line, instead of this perpetual zigzag I seem to be caught in. There’s this pressure to be ‘on the way’ somewhere, anywhere, but every time I try to follow that invisible arrow pointing me forward, I end up on some detour I didn’t sign up for. Not bad, not good, just... not where I thought I would be. And then I wonder: am I the only one on the detour? Or are we all just pretending we’ve found the main road?

Because the truth is, when I look around, I don’t see a lot of people walking with that clarity of purpose. Sure, they talk about it—loudly, confidently, as if they know the map. But isn’t it strange how so many people still feel off in their own ways? Some are just better at keeping the facade up. Isn’t that what life is, though? A masquerade ball of people with well-rehearsed routines, dancing to some invisible beat? And then I wonder if I’m the only one without rhythm. Am I missing something everyone else already figured out? Or maybe I’ve just been listening to the wrong song.

It feels like you’re supposed to have this idea of what the future holds, but every time I try to grab it, it slips right through my fingers, like smoke. All these “answers” are supposed to be coming at me, right? But they’re more like sparks of light in the distance—glimmering but too far to touch. What’s the deal with everyone else being so sure about what comes next? It’s like I missed a memo. Was I supposed to be set at twenty-three? Was I supposed to wake up one morning with this magical sense of direction, this wild confidence in who I am and where I’m going? The truth is, I feel more like I’m just sort of there, wandering through the days, listening to the sound of my own footsteps and wondering if they even matter.

There’s always this background hum, a low drone of pressure, whether it’s from friends, family, or society, telling me to get it together, to become someone. They say “You’re in your prime,” but is that just another way of saying “You should be living your best life right now, and anything less than that is failure”? They call it the “defining years,” as if twenty-three is some magical threshold where everything clicks into place. So why does it feel like I’m not even close to figuring out the basics?

I try not to let it get to me, the way everyone talks about their successes and their carefully curated “perfect” moments. It’s hard to keep up with the illusion when all I feel is the disconnect between what I’m supposed to feel and what I actually feel. And it’s not like I’m unhappy. It’s just that the whole “find yourself” thing seems so... stale. Like a bad perfume that’s been lingering in the air for too long. Everyone keeps talking about being “authentic,” but when you try to be authentic, it’s almost like you’re stepping on someone else’s toes. Is authenticity just another trend now? Is being true to yourself the latest thing that’s been packaged and sold to the masses?

So, I walk around with these questions, quietly asking them to myself, and they feel so personal, but at the same time, they feel so universal. Maybe we’re all supposed to be asking these questions. Maybe that’s the key. To always be in search of some truth that doesn’t exist, or at least, that we don’t get to find neatly packaged with a bow. I think there’s freedom in that—freedom in the question itself. It’s just hard sometimes, you know? To live in the question without trying to demand an answer.

And so I linger, in this perpetual in-between, where the clock ticks, but the hours seem irrelevant. It's funny how everyone around me moves forward—marching with the beat of some invisible drum, their steps measured and sure. They talk in a language of “plans,” of “achievements,” of “next steps,” and I’m left translating, wondering if I even speak the same dialect. They tell me I’m still young, that I have time, but the ticking feels louder now. Not like a countdown, but like a reminder. A reminder that time is always moving, even if I feel stuck, suspended in this weird, uncomfortable pause.

Sometimes, I think about those stories we tell ourselves about how life is supposed to unfold. The ones where the heroes know exactly who they are, and their journey is a straight line, a path to follow with milestones clearly marked. The kind of life we see on Instagram, in movies, in those “dreams” we’re sold. But the reality is... that path doesn’t exist. There are no clear markers, no definite signs. Just a lot of wandering, a lot of guesswork, a lot of seeing something on the horizon and chasing it, only to find it’s not what you thought it was.

Maybe that’s the trick, though. Maybe the journey isn’t about finding the destination but about figuring out that there is no destination. The funny part is, I don’t know if I actually believe that. I want to, but it feels too abstract. Too... unsatisfying, almost. To think there’s no finish line, no neat bow to tie it all up. But still, there’s a part of me that wonders—what if that’s where the freedom lies? In the nothingness? In the acceptance that we’re always going to be unsure? I can hear the voices of everyone around me telling me to get my act together, to stop wandering, to “settle down,” to make decisions. But every time I try to latch onto something, I feel it slip away. Every decision feels like a gamble, and I’m getting tired of playing games I didn’t even sign up for.

You can’t talk about uncertainty without talking about the constant pressure to have it figured out, though. That’s the real weight. It’s not the quietness, not the questions. It’s the way everyone’s asking when you’re going to get serious, when you’re going to have that “aha” moment. Like there's this expectation that twenty-three should be the year of clarity. And I keep asking myself, why? Why twenty-three? What’s so magical about that number? Maybe it’s the number that feels just old enough to be mature, but still young enough to be forgiven for not knowing. But the truth is, I don’t feel older. I don’t feel more “mature.” I feel like I’m in some kind of paradoxical state where I’m both too old and not old enough to make sense of it all.

And then there’s the idea of “success.” Everyone seems to have it mapped out—family, career, house, relationship. And I’m just here, sitting on the sidelines, wondering if I missed a class. I didn’t get the memo about how to tie all the pieces together. They’re all talking about their “accomplishments,” their “plans,” their “next big move,” and I can’t help but wonder, do they really have it all together? Or are we all just playing a game of pretend, wearing these masks of certainty, when beneath it all, we’re all still fumbling, still wondering, still waiting for the real moment to come, the one where we suddenly know what we’re doing?

There’s comfort in the thought that maybe we’re all in the same boat, though. But maybe that’s a little too hopeful, too naïve. Maybe some people really do know exactly where they’re headed, and I’m just the one sitting here in the waiting room, looking at everyone else’s tickets and wondering why mine doesn’t match. Maybe it’s not about not knowing. Maybe it’s about the way we talk about not knowing. Like there’s something wrong with it. Like you’re supposed to have a roadmap by now, a “vision,” a “dream.” What happens if you don’t? Do you just keep walking in circles? Or do you embrace the randomness? The chaos? I don’t know.

I wish I could say there’s peace in the not knowing. Maybe there is, but it feels too... fleeting. Like you’re almost there, almost at the edge of something, but it keeps retreating. The questions, the uncertainty—they swirl around me like smoke. Sometimes, I think they’re the only thing that’s really real. Maybe that’s the trick. Maybe we’ve all been looking for answers when we should have been looking for the questions themselves.

Maybe we’ve all been told too many times that we need to find our “purpose,” our “calling.” Maybe it’s not about finding anything at all. Maybe it’s just about being. Being here. But even that doesn’t feel enough sometimes, does it? Because then you’re left with the nagging thought that maybe you’re missing something, something everyone else is on the verge of discovering. But maybe they’re not either. Maybe we’re all just a bunch of wanderers pretending we know where we’re going, pretending we’re on the path when all we really have is a moment, and that’s all.

So, here I am—twenty-three—and still wondering. Still trying to make sense of the noise and the quiet, the questions and the answers, the direction and the detours. But I wonder—can I truly be okay with this? Or is there just too much pressure to find something? To arrive somewhere? Maybe the trick isn’t to find the answers, but to stay in the question. To let it be the thing that keeps you moving. Not in a straight line, but in spirals, in loops, in circles that never quite close but always keep you on the move.

And so, I keep walking. Quietly. Maybe that’s enough?

Moving through this strange intersection of life, caught between a past that still whispers, and a future that feels perpetually out of reach. It's like standing in the doorway of a room, wondering whether to step in, but somehow frozen in the threshold. What is it about that threshold that holds us there, in the limbo, in the in-between? Is it fear? Or is it just that, deep down, we’ve all been conditioned to believe that we should know what comes next?

The odd part is, the world doesn’t really ask for clarity, does it? Not from anyone. We assume that everyone else is walking with purpose, that they’ve got their paths laid out like a string of pearls, each one perfectly spaced. But the more I look, the more I realize: no one has it figured out. Not really. They’re just walking along, carrying their own whispers of doubt in their pockets, pretending that they don’t hear them, maybe even convincing themselves that they don’t exist. Everyone's just trying to keep up with the illusion. Some people just happen to be better at it than others. I can hear them sometimes, the ones who make it look easy. Their voices are full of certainty, full of the right answers, the right moves. And then there's me, sitting here with a question mark hanging over my head, wondering if I missed the lesson on how to sound that confident.

But it doesn’t stop. The questions. The questions keep coming, and I’m not even sure if they’re helping. They might just be distractions, like the static on an old radio, fuzzing up everything around me. Sometimes, I get tired of listening to them, but then I remember that the questions are all I’ve got. If I let go of them, what would be left? An empty space? A void? I think it’s easier to live in the question than to try to find an answer that doesn't quite fit. Maybe that's why I'm still here—still questioning, still wondering, still walking, though not in a straight line. More like a zigzag that never fully gets anywhere.

And yet, the weight of expectation is never far behind. The invisible pressure from everyone around me—family, friends, society—always reminds me that there’s a timeline, a schedule I’m supposed to be following. It’s a quiet hum in the background, urging me to “hurry up,” to “catch up,” to “figure it out.” But what does it even mean to "figure it out"? It’s not like there’s a finish line, a finish line that guarantees satisfaction or contentment. It's like someone handed me a map, but it's so worn, so faded, that I can't even read it anymore. Maybe that’s the trick, though: maybe I’m not supposed to read it. Maybe I’m not supposed to follow it at all.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that all these “milestones” everyone talks about—career, love, family—are just distractions. They’re little glittering pieces of the puzzle, but they aren’t the puzzle. They’re not the thing I’m supposed to be chasing. But what is the thing I’m supposed to be chasing? If I don’t know what’s next, how do I know if I’m moving in the right direction? And yet, I can’t seem to stop walking. Can’t seem to stop moving. Not because I know where I’m going, but because standing still feels like an impossible option. Even if I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, at least I’m doing something. At least I’m moving.

And I wonder, in the silence of my own thoughts, how many others are feeling the same? Maybe it’s not just me, stuck in this maze of uncertainty. Maybe it’s everyone. Maybe the whole world is just full of people walking around with questions in their pockets, pretending that they don’t hear the static. The questions are too loud to ignore, and yet, we all try. We try to drown them out with the noise of “success,” of “accomplishment,” of “getting it together.” But when the noise fades, all we’re left with are the questions. And it’s funny how the questions seem to get louder as I get older, like a growing chorus in the back of my mind. Is it that I’ve stopped pretending to have answers, or is it that the answers never existed in the first place?

Sometimes, I think I’m afraid of the questions because they don’t offer any comforting promises. There’s no resolution in them, no neat bow at the end. They just hang there, suspended in the air like a cloud, dark and heavy, but never quite dissipating. There’s no roadmap. No clear-cut directions. Just the haze of possibility. The terrifying, beautiful chaos of not knowing.

It’s strange, though—there’s a certain liberation in the confusion. It’s not the kind of liberation that comes with a sense of clarity or understanding, but the kind that lets you exist in the mess. The kind that allows you to step off the path everyone else is walking and stumble into your own. Maybe there’s no one answer, no one way. Maybe the trick is to let it all be messy, to be okay with not knowing. But I can’t help but wonder, what does it mean to be “okay” with the mess? Am I really okay, or am I just too tired to fight against it?

And so I keep walking, my steps uncertain, my thoughts just as unsteady. Maybe I’m not supposed to find the answers after all. Maybe I’m supposed to be just here, in this moment, with these questions, letting them swirl around me without trying to contain them. Maybe there’s beauty in that. But it’s hard to feel the beauty when everyone else seems to have found their way, when they talk about their plans, their futures, their lives that look so beautifully scripted. It’s hard to not wonder if I missed the page where everything made sense.

But maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s not about finding the answers or making sense of it all. Maybe it’s just about staying in the middle of it. In the mess, in the noise, in the questions. Maybe that’s where the real living happens. Not in the conclusion, but in the question itself.

So here I am, still wondering, still questioning. Still not quite fitting into the picture that everyone else seems to have drawn for me. Still walking through this world of noise and quiet, trying to find a place where I can make sense of it all—or at least make peace with the fact that maybe I’m not supposed to.

It wasn’t the silence that scared me, it was the thought that maybe, I was the silence. And, in that silence, I thought I was hearing my own thoughts, but what if they weren’t mine at all? And then it hit me: maybe the real question is whether I’ll ever stop asking, or if one day, the questions will start asking me instead.

- Oizys.

P.S. Started this piece in April 2023, and here I am, wrapping it up in April 2025—guess some questions really do take their time.