If I’m no longer broken, who am I allowed to be?

As a girl, I would daydream about becoming a writer, one of those beautifully pained ones, damaged in all the wrong ways to produce all the right kinds of writing. A recluse, but viscerally open in my words. I imagined a life lived in quiet, curated chaos, my suffering arranged neatly on a page, bleeding eloquently between the lines. As I grew, and walked through those horrible, throat-scratching phases of life, that vision felt almost prophetic. And now, in a phase that is; comparatively... better (I do not know how long this is going to last, so I am both backhandedly excited and jittery about it), I feel divided. A part of me constantly fears that I can no longer write (or extract any pleasure from writing) the way I used to when I was destructively sad. Back then, every act of surrendering to despair was followed by a strange, guilty pleasure: I would create thick, messy, overloaded fodder for my daydream-writer’s mental masturbation. And now? Now I feel... clean. Functional. There’s no storm surge behind my ribs, no dramatic collapse mid-sentence. The pain is quieter now, less cinematic. And maybe that’s the problem. I catch myself mourning the drama. The girl who used to stay up until dawn writing about aching bones and rusted hope. The one who found poetry in self-destruction, who thought art was supposed to cost you everything. Now that I'm not hurting the same way, I wonder: what do I write about? Where do I even begin? And worse... do I even want to begin? Or do I just want to want it, to chase that memory of myself: bruised, brilliant, burning with something worth saying?

See, it is not like there are no things to write about. There’s the debilitating existential crisis. The preemptive guilt. The predicted regret of not having done enough with my life while I actively rot in my room, let my fears marinate me. The oddest family dynamic that I should be running away from. The fact that I have zero friends right now. The fact that I am so far behind the person I once imagined myself to become. The fact that everyone else’s success just bursts my bubble of imagination and makes me want to want what they have, even if that’s not actually what I want. The longing for some safety. Some love. Someone believing in me in a way I don’t have to audition for. But when I sit down to write about it, it’s like the words are coated in plastic wrap. I can see them, I feel them, but they’re just out of reach, suffocated before they’re born. Like they don’t want to perform unless I’m on the verge of collapse. I hate how romantic I’ve made my own despair. How I still hold it like a badge, like an old lover I secretly hope to run into, hoping he’ll beg me to come back. There’s something disgusting about that... this yearning for the suffering that once made me a better writer (I am not even sure about this, I am just judging on the basis of the pleasure I derived from writing like that), or at least felt like it did. Because when I was sad, truly, blisteringly sad, the writing came easy. Not necessarily good, but easy. It poured. It oozed. It didn’t ask permission. Now? I write like I’m applying for a visa. Nervous, apologetic, trying to convince the page that I’m worthy. And that makes me furiously annoyed. I want to write like I’m about to die again. Like I am scratching the rock bottom with my nails while they are banging the door angrily and if they break the door, it is the end of me. I want to write like I did when my loneliness was so loud, it echoed back in language. 

But maybe I don’t deserve that kind of writing anymore. Maybe contentment; or whatever this beige numbness is; has sterilized me. Maybe I’ve become the worst thing a writer can be: stable. And not the steady, solid kind. The lukewarm, inoffensive, clear-soup kind. I feel like a retired war poet who now writes newsletters for an insurance company. (While war still goes on in the world...) There’s still pain, yes. But it’s cluttered now. Bureaucratized. More filing cabinet than forest fire.

Just to entertain the other aspect of it... Parts of me, the shivering, crying, begging-it-to-stop, silently-resisting, hungrily-snatched, deprived-of-orientation inner childgirl, doesn’t want any of it to come back. “Please, no,” she screams from some old, blood-crusted corner of my gut. Not the beautiful pain. Not the poetic breakdowns. Not the nightly mental carnage I used to repurpose into prose. She doesn’t care if it made ‘good writing.’ She just wants quiet. Softness. To be held without agenda. Then there is the animal. (You remember about it.) It hasn’t left. It just slinks behind my ribcage now, quieter, sneakier. It keeps reliving the scenarios... the real ones, the fictionalized ones, the ones it borrowed from somewhere and convinced me were mine. It flashes them across my inner screen like a cursed film projector.. “Look. Look. LOOK.” Even as I fold laundry. Even as I reply to a harmless Slack message. Even as I blink like a normal person on a normal day. And real-time me? She’s busy fighting it. Fending it off with little swords made of routine and distraction... emails, dishes, walking to the store and pretending to care about avocados. It’s a silent battle. No medals. No victory laps. Just me, quietly losing and pretending that’s not what’s happening. Sometimes I think that maybe the animal and the childgirl are the same being.

Just fractured... before and after. One begging me not to open the door. The other already halfway inside. Because really, what is the animal if not the child who wasn't rescued? What is rage, obsession, reliving, but grief that's grown claws? The childgirl weeps, starves, curls in on herself, begs for it all to stop. But she wasn’t saved. She stayed there. Alone with all the teeth and shadows and silence. And at some point, something inside her snapped its neck in a different direction. And that’s when the animal was born. Not out of strength, not really. But out of necessity. Out of adaptation. Like a body that grows armor instead of skin. Like a scream that, after being ignored long enough, learns to growl instead. The animal is the childgirl, but post-mutation. She’s what happens when tenderness gets no witness. When the crying goes unanswered. When touch never comes. So she learned how to tear. How to replay. How to haunt me with the scenes that broke her because she still believes that maybe this time, someone will stop them. That someone... me, I guess, will finally barge in and pull her out of the burning room. But I don't. I just sit there, frozen. Watching the fire. Again and again and again. And so she keeps looping it. And the child keeps sobbing. And I keep being both.

And trust me when I say, I want things to get better. Even better... I want to leave. I want to be better. Build friendships. Have love. Have a kind heart with zero smokes out of it, no fire alarms going off inside my skull every time someone touches my arm a second too long. I want the safety I was too young to know I was missing. But. Of course... but. A part of me starts preemptively longing. Pre-grieving. Because if (and when) I get better, if the childgirl is finally wrapped in something warmer than silence, if the animal is gently put down, if I stop bleeding through my words and start living through them, then what? What am I? Just a… well-adjusted adult with hydration goals and a therapy budget? A “nice girl” with manageable emotions, a skincare routine, and no diary full of nuclear fallout? Will I wear linen? Say “I’m doing great, actually” and mean it? And will that version of me still be me? Or just a polite ghost of everything I had to destroy to get there? See, I don’t know who I am without the ache. Without the underground tunnels. Without the wild-eyed obsession with making art out of damage. If I’m not built from ruin, am I still real? Or do I just become a bland survivor with nothing left to say? Do I become… boring? Because pain was my proof of depth. Sadness was my flex. I made my suffering look good. Sculpted it. Dressed it in metaphor. Made it palatable enough to pass as poetry. So what happens when I’m no longer starving for rescue? When I’m no longer burning at both ends just to stay warm? Do I fade? Do I vanish?

Or worse... do I go on, ordinary?

So I keep spiraling... not in self-pity, not even in despair, but in this slow, maddening unpeeling of self. Because maybe, just maybe, I’ve spent so long romanticizing the pain, feeding off its drama, curating its aesthetics, that I don’t know how to write from anywhere else. I don’t know how to be from anywhere else. It’s not even martyrdom. It’s muscle memory. My spine remembers collapsing. My lungs remember the scream I never let out. My mouth still twitches in the shape of a confession, even when there's nothing left to say. And here’s the cruel punchline: I do want to be better. Not performatively better. Not Instagram-inspirational better. Actually better. Whole. Boring. Soft. Holding hands with someone who loves me in the daylight. But. Look, I know... once I get better, it does not absolve my past. It does not dissolve my wounds. It does not disinfect my trauma. It doesn’t work like that. It’s like this: Take a bowl. Pour a lump of porridge. Then scoop in some thick, grey sludge. That’s the trauma. Then another layer of porridge. That’s time. That’s healing. That’s therapy and chamomile tea and moving cities and "forgiving your father" (ugh..) and trying again. But the sludge? It never goes away. It’s caked in. It seeps. And no matter how much one heals, it stays suspended there... unappetizing, invisible from the surface, but there. Living with you. Inside you. Even if I go in excavating like a scavenger, teeth bared, fingernails cracked, I would still find myself lathered in the sludgy porridge of... what else? Life. This life. My life. Messy. Uneven. Undone. And maybe that’s what it is. Maybe healing isn’t cleansing. Maybe it’s just learning to live with the texture. The occasional bite of sludge. The weird mouthfeel of memory. The taste of something that doesn’t go away but no longer poisons you on contact. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe that’s survival. Maybe that’s me.

I don’t know. It’s Sunday. Midnight. I’m all clean after my everything-bath. I’m moisturized from top to bottom like a well-oiled emotional wreck. My mother is softly snoring beside me. And I just had this... itch to write before I slept... only to wake up to Monday. So...

- Oizys.

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.

Things Are Getting Hard Again

Things are getting hard again, and I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go. My belly is juggling coals. My skin is crawling to escape. And my mind is rotting. I am so tired of being scared. Being judged. Being fearful. Being less. Being mocked. Being excluded. Being looked at. Laughed at. Sneered at. And all I do is beg in disguise of fantasies. I sit here in a corner and make up castles that are filled with nonsensical hope and delusion. I have limited myself so much to a point of complete erasure that it is almost a crime. And I am just sad. Sad to be. It pains so much. To be lack of something. To be looked at and not accepted anywhere. To be not allowed to dream. What is it that smells so much? What is wrong with me? Why me? And why not me? I have dreamt so much to a point of praying to God knows who that it is almost a shame. And I hear back nothing. I get back nothing. More exclusion. More limitation. More nothing. I have lacked so much to a point of loneliness that it almost feels natural. To be unloved. To be understood. To be not believed. And it is cold. Lonely. Dark. 

It’s as if the walls are closing in, each brick a reminder of all I’ve lost and all I can’t reach. I want to scream, to break free from this suffocating silence, but the words twist in my throat. Silence chokes me. I watch life unfold from a distance, a spectator in a world that seems to move on without me. Life excludes me. Each day blurs into the next, a disposed thread of longing and despair. I search for a glow—a thread of connection—but it slips through my fingers like sand. Why do I keep trying when every effort feels futile? I think of the castles I build, elaborate yet fragile. They’re my refuge, but they crumble at the slightest breeze, the slightest connection with reality. Hope feels like a joke, a cruel trick played by fate. What is it that I truly want? Love? Understanding? A voice that echoes back when I speak into the void? I ache for the simple comfort of being understood, yet I feel like a ghost haunting my own life.

I hide myself underneath these flimsy covers and end this to force myself to fall into sleep with yet another delusion of the possibility of not waking up tomorrow morning. Please. If anyone is listening...

- Oizys.

Lethargy or Lottery?

A while ago, there were small yet some regular goalposts in life. Maybe assignments, internals, internships or exams. But, college is over. Now, I am free to climb as high as possible or just fall. Obviously, for me, it is the latter.

It's only been a week I have started working. Menial and underpaid. All I do is wake up. Log in. Click. Click. Click. Type some. Click some more. Update your lead. Click some more. Log out. Lie on bed dreading about tomorrow's clicking. Sleep. Wake up and repeat. I feel as life I'm going to spend the rest of my life sitting at a desk alternating my day dreams between traveling and writing about the world and killing myself. Though, I can only daydream about them since I do not have the guts to do either. It's only been a week I have started working and I can't do this anymore. The moment I start working, I am reminded of my failures and inability to achieve what I had dreamt. All the dreams, hopes, desires and goals I had built for this year, all just shattered. And, I don't think I can take this failure. My bdy is ready to pop off. There is a ball of guilt in my throat which doesn't let me eat. Every moment I just wish I hadn't dreamt about all of that, so the failure and rejection wouldn't hurt so much. I had a life crafted in my head, my wings spread, flying around the world. But, nothing of the sort happened. I am stuck here, between this wobbly table and my side of the bed. With my mother, on the other side of the bed, breathing down my neck. With my father, near the door, keeping me chained. I wish I could leave everything behind and run away and breathe some fresh air. But, it's been months I have seen the sun. Every day, I sit and think. What was so wrong with me? Why did I get rejected? Is there something so repulsive about me?

God, I feel so stuck. Stickily stuck. So stuck that I cannot even get up and walk out of this room. Just stuck here in this sticky liquid of fear and lethargy. I just coddle and comfort myself by thinking this is the waiting room. Something is waiting for me outside this and when the time comes, my life will become a land of beautiful fields. Deep down, I know it is not real. Rather, it is a waiting room for death. And, not a very great waiting room, I must say.

- Oizys.

Peeling Rusty Layers: Trying To Unveiling the Uncharted Realities Within

I would like to begin by mentioning my credentials as a fellow dissosiate. I have been dissociating for as long as I can remember. I would play with toys to show my parents, but underneath, I would be pretending to live some other life. At first, I felt enigmatic. I felt like I had the magical power to take myself on a journey wherever I could. I was building this labyrinth-like maze around me. I found a refuge deep within the walls of this intricate labyrinth and lost myself in the complicated maze from the chaos and confusion around me. It became my sanctuary, a place where I could retreat and find solace in the midst of overwhelming emotions or external pressures. The more I dissociated, the more elaborate and intricate my labyrinth grew. Each twist and turn represented a coping mechanism, a defence mechanism that shielded me from the harsh realities I struggled to comprehend.

But as I grow older, I realise that my labyrinth, while once a source of comfort, has become a barrier that isolates me from genuine connections and authentic experiences. It was as if I had built an impenetrable fortress around myself, preventing others from truly seeing me and, in turn, impeding my ability to fully engage with the world around me. I touch my knee, and I feel a jolt within myself. Whose is it? I cannot recognise my face in the pictures. Who is she? Every time I wake up for sleep, I feel like I have been teleported into a completely different world. I feel as if I have forgotten my mother tongue. In the labyrinth of my mind, fragments of melodies linger, wisps of forgotten conversations that evoke a longing for a language I can no longer grasp. It is as if a veil has been cast, obscuring the words that once flowed effortlessly from my lips. The food feels foreign in my mouth. The taste of my mother's comforting meals, once a symphony of love and nourishment, now feels like a distant memory slipping through my fingers. The once-beloved dishes now seem distant, their flavours veiled in a thin shroud of unfamiliarity. I chew chilli peppers after chilli peppers and cry my eyes out, yet I feel no spice.

Now, I try to navigate my way out. It is not easy, as every wall and corridor has memories, emotions, and fears carved deep into them that I have tucked away. But, I think, the real hindrance is confronting the underlying causes of my dissociation—the wounds that led me to seek refuge in the labyrinth. It is hurtful. The core reason is hidden somewhere deep. And it is wrapped with layers and layers of woolgathering. It is painful as I try to navigate and unwrap. It feels like I am scraping off the rusty layers of derealized lives to give birth to my reality. Ever pulled out a dry tampon? Yeah, that's what this feels like. So uncomfortable. So difficult. Skin-wrenching. A completely unused life. But the conundrum is that even if I successfully pull it out, I can never reuse it, right? Think about it. I will spend months and years peeling off all these fake identities to embark upon a realisation pilgrimage—a quest to reconnect with the actualities that formed the foundation of my identity—only to find out I have no countable experiences in my real life as a contrast to my fantasies, where I have lived a wide range of characters, lives, and universes in my own metaverse. With each layer shed, I am forced to reckon with the profound absence of tangible experiences, genuine relationships, and a solid sense of self. The time spent lost in my dissociative metaverse has left me with a fragmented timeline, where the milestones of childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood slip through my grasp like sand through clenched fists. While I find out this new fact, I will have lost time as well. With my childhood, teenhood, and half of the twentyhood already eschewed by psycheclipse, I will be left with an infant in an adult body who has lost a chunk of sentience.

I fall back into bed. Tired and wounded. I scrape off the rust and chip away at this oxidised facade, leaving reality in my palms. It looks like a weak, crying baby—red-faced, marked with spots of uncertainty and fragility. And I am a tired mother who is suddenly thrust into this duty to nurture and care for this fragile and broken soul, offering solace and comfort as she navigates the path of self-discovery and healing.